Heavy In Your Arms
by Splickedylit
Summary: The hemospectrum is abolished: the winged emperor rules under a heavy crown. The third revolution is coming. And it all starts when, down on the streets, coldblooded and hated, a purpleblood meets the descendant of the man who changed the world. GamzeeKarkat, Tavros3Gamzee, more as further chapters are updated.
1. A Heavy Heart

**Length**: 12,000 words

**Characters/Pairings**: Gamzee/Karkat, onesided Kanaya/Vriska, Tavros Nitram, and just a bit of Equius Zahhak

**Warnings**: Prostitution, implied nongraphic sex, language, blood, substance abuse/addiction.

**Note**: This story was written for a prompt given to me by my sister: "_A story about a troll who acts as a "volunteer concupiscent partner" for others who don't have anyone to avoid certain death by culling and then they realize that they're actually extremely awfully pale for one of their regulars and emotional turmoil results._"

It has since blossomed out of control into a universe of considerably larger proportions. Things to know: the hemospectrum is not reversed, although it may seem that way at a glance. It's technically not a thing anymore; everyone is legally equal, ever since the Summoner's rebellion succeeded. But a lot of people (starting somewhere around teal) hold a nasty grudge against anyone coldblooded, so coldbloods have a very hard time finding jobs or keeping themselves afloat.

_And thus we find our first main character..._

* * *

Your name is Gamzee and you make miracles happen.

Like the miracle that's happening right now under you, with your new sister's head all thrown back, her chest going up and down so strong and her hair all over the pillow. It looks nice; you admire, and lose a couple seconds, like little blinks. Things come in freeze-frames, paintings, and next thing you know you must've missed everything interesting—pail's too full to be all hers, too purple to be green. You're lying to one side of where you remember being last and she's up and walking around, pulling on a towel, all tousle and disarray.

This time you don't like, not usually. Those eyes as were closed and soft before, now they're turned down and away and hard. She don't want to think about you bein' there. She erases you and avoids and ignores, and you have learned not to say goodbye to the ones that want to think you ain't there.

You clean up as best you can, pull on your clothes and go.

The city is hot today, even though everything's covered and hooded and the late evening sunlight doesn't reach the ground. Sticks to you, comforting on your cold bones. Once woulda made your hair this big miraculous mess, all sorts of fun to look at, but your friends told you to cut it off short a while back and who are you to question your friends, as is bein' the ones to look out for you? They give you what you need and everything, all the little pills that make life smooth around the edges.

Sometimes they take them away. But you've been doin' better in past perigees and they haven't had to do that in quite a stretch. And all you have to do is feel good and make feel good alike, and get brothers and sisters through the drone season and lonely times.

Some part of you niggles this ain't right, but you don't trust it—because it's you and you ain't the type to be trusted with important shit. Leave that to your friends. They know better.

There's a message on the phone as must've come in while you and your sister were occupied. You check it; it's all nice, 'would-you-please' and 'if-you-would'. Must've come from your sweeter friend then. She's a kind sister to you, and she tells you you've got a spot a handful of streets down, little mechanic's shop. It's hearts.

She don't tell you a blood color.

You set out into the sunset-empty streets to make someone another little flushed miracle.

When you reach the place as you're supposed to end up, there's a shop on the bottom floor and a big, big guy working there. He's got a horn what's snapped right off at the base, and dark glasses on his eyes, and he has got a figure truly impressive in his state of sleeve-lacking. You stop a while to consider, and he looks up at you and gives you the look right in that moment of one who doesn't want you to even be there.

"If you're looking for my _tenant_," he says, to the ceiling, the sky, somewhere far and beyond you with disgust, "…you'll find him upstairs. He was expecting you."

He don't want you to be there were he's gotta look on you. You nod your head and you go.

The room he's given out is up at the top of the place, and the door is shut. You've learned a lot since you started out; you knock, nice and quiet so's not to disturb.

You shouldn't have worried about disturbing, as it turns out, because the second you knock the door slams open and there's the guy you're there for, standing there a couple heads shorter than you and broader around and glaring like if he had an ounce more will for it he'd tear into you. You were pretty sure this was supposed to be red. Maybe you thought wrong?

You take each other in. Brother's a nubby short little motherfucker, with a bush of hair as almost swallows his horns and teeth poking down over his lip. He's small, looks to be a hard one, full of fire, and you kinda like the way he looks hard on you, like he's taking in every single thing. He looks on you and even with all the dark around you feel fully and strangely motherfuckin' seen. He watches you for another second, and then he steps aside and jerks his head like he wants you to follow on in.

It's clear the second you step a foot inside that he affords for cooling and you shiver a little and try to judge as how respectful to be and how much talking he's up to allow. Nice kinda room, about as big as yours with a box on a little table next to the couch—you'd lay money that's the couch where he sleeps and the box where he keeps sopor. One window, high and small in one corner, but the sun's just set and there's no light to let in now. It's dark. Your brother is already half unbuttoned by the time you look back to him, but he stops when he sees you lookin' on him again and frowns.

"They said you're the one who can't keep a secret," he says, first thing, and you blink at him because that one is a one that is new to you. Huh. Can't argue that one too much, bein' that you talk so free to every person who'll put up with you. It's a thing to do, talkin' to your brothers and sisters as do the same work you do, changing stories and talking about those as have asked for your services.

"Not to save my life," says the pills, and you sit back and let them talk. "…sometimes come up with secrets to tell all on my own, I got so much keeping I ain't motherfuckin' doin'."

This seems to answer questions as he hasn't even asked, because he hums and growls and chews that over for a second. He raises his brows at you and you smile, all hazy and happy through the pills.

"…that's why they sent you," he says, and you see that's one of those questions as comes out not looking for answers, all by its lonesome. Lonely little motherfuckers, you always thought. "…because no matter how much shit you tell, nobody is going to believe you."

"I don't know, bro," your mouth answers anyway, and you blink and then lay back and let it answer. "I just do to make a brother feel good, is all. That's why they send me anywhere, so far as I'm aware of anyhow."

"Oh shut up," he snaps, and you open your mouth to tell him okay and then close it again because you listen to the pills but you listen to them as you're gonna pail more. "Come here then—let's get this over with."

He is small and loud and angry with everything. He is angry with you and with the room and he is angry for feeling good the way you coax him to and he is somehow precious to you, in ways you don't quite get. Makes you so very happy, but that happy is all unhappy and inside-out.

He is also made of miracles.

You sit and stare afterwards, all sorts of fascinated, and he takes care of the place your fangs nicked skin on his shoulder like it'll kill him to have it seen. He looks hard, angry. But he doesn't avoid looking at you. Keeps his eyes on you uncommon much, really. Like he's trying to figure you out.

You like the color you seen under his skin. It feels like touching something more than you. Something better.

"Do you ever stop talking?" He grumbles, and you realize you been talking the whole time, this little stream of words dripping down without your consciousness. You laugh and stop, and laugh again. He doesn't laugh. "…you don't know who I am. Got it?"

Ain't a problem, since you don't. And yet it seems he thinks this is one of them questions as doesn't need an answer, like you _should._ And you shouldn't?

"Bro," you say, in full honesty, "…I got no motherfucking clue who you are."

He studies you again, with those strange eyes the color of miracles.

"…huh," he says, after a time or two, and he crosses his arms and considers. You sit, because you got a good sitting spot here and he doesn't seem to want you out yet. You are tired, to your bones. You need another pill, another handful of pills to take the weird, sad sickness out of your guts. "…hey. You have any full quadrants? Like…" he frowns at you and you smile back but it doesn't soften that frown any. Doesn't look angry, as such, not the way you're used to them bein' angry at you for existin'. He's still digging, trying to figure something out you ain't got the knowin' of. "…listen, do you have a moirail?"

The skinny purple-blood blinks up at you from the bed and you wish he would put clothes on, or at least cover up more. You can still see the places you clawed at his sides and shoulders (_wild with the sensations when he eased you out of your clothes, it's been so long so long and you were right you needed this, you feel so much better so why do you feel so much worse_); blood is dripping down his arm in slow purple trickles that make you feel weirdly sick.

"…moirail," you repeat after a second, and he scratches the base of one twisted horn _(yellowed fragile malnourished goddamn he's so fucking _thin). You can see him trying hard to think, to concentrate; he looks lost with the unaccustomed effort. "A _palemate_. Is there anyone in your diamond quadrant, do you _have a moirail_."

"_Do I have a_…oh!" He brightens up. "Moirail, that's like…the motherfucker as is supposed to keep you up in your chill, right? Yeah, I got one of those!"

You aren't disappointed. At all. Why the fuck would you be disappointed, there is literally no reason for that. You're just surprised. And angry at whoever claims to be this scrawny excuse-for-a-troll's moirail and still lets him wander around with that sad, lost smile on his face. The little part of you that still believes in romcom endings and serendipity and true moiraillegiance (_the part of you that's not hiring concupiscent partners in cheap hotel rooms_) is indignant. That little part of you whispers _you could do better than—_

That little part of you gets stamped down by the foot of cold reason.

"Why is that an interest to you, bro?" He asks, and you jump and realize you've been staring at him again. He has dark lines under his eyes. His face has the scoured look of someone with harsh soap and a lot of scrubbing; his hair is a cropped tangle that makes his face look all the more skeletal, and the collar that sits high and tight on his throat gleams at you from the darkness like the eyes of some kind of animal, dull and forbidding. You feel sick.

"Just wondering," you snap back, and however dazed he looks he at least seems to realize that you're upset. He lowers his gaze—draws back his horns a little, _no offense, don't take offense._ On someone with horns like those, the gesture is actually noticeable. The hemospectrum hasn't held any weight for sweeps now, but there's still something in you that makes your guts feel weird to see him showing such obvious signs of deference to your nonexistent authority.

You're about to tell him to stop cringing when his palmhusk buzzes on the table next to your couch; he leans down to pick it up and his eyes flick over the message. Makes a kind of '_eh, not my favorite_' face and drops it back down with a little sigh. Smiles at you.

"Got to go, bro," he says, and hauls his massive, bony frame up off your couch. "—some teal out there as wants a black itch scratched. Y'all have a great night."

"Uh." You stare at him, blink a few times, and then manage to sort of nod as he starts to pull on his clothes. He just got up from your couch, naked and skeleton-thin in the rising moonlight, and now he's going to go and…him and some tealblood are going to…

You feel…not disgusted, but something else almost the same. Something cold and sickening and strange, and you don't want him to go but there's just basically no fucking way you can stop him, and the thought of ordering him not to go seems ridiculous. Even after the Second Rebellion, the overthrow of the hemocaste system and the riots and debates over blood color are mostly gone, some part of you goes tight and nervous at the thought of giving orders to someone who's looking at you with eyes that shade of cool purple.

…but still, something makes you sit up a little straighter as he starts to go, reaching out a little after him before you can help yourself.

"Hey."

He turns around in the doorway. Zahhak must have turned on the lights outside, because there's a strip of golden light falling on his face from one side, lighting up every skeletal plane. It makes his eyes strange and makes their weird purple color brilliant in the dark.

"…what's your name?"

He looks surprised, and you wonder if anyone who's ever bought his services has asked him that. Shit shit shit _fuck_, you _bought _him, god, what the hell—

And then, after a second, he smiles a strange, confused little smile.

"...ain't of no concern, my wicked motherfucker," he says, and there's a sort of softness to his voice. "Been told not to give such things out freely. But it's mighty sweet of you to ask a thing such as that. Makes a brother feel—"

…but he trails off there, with this odd expression on his face, and then ducks through the crack in the door and vanishes into the light.

You curl up on your couch and feel like a piece of shit until you drift off into an uneasy sort of sleep, and you are absolutely resolved you will never see him again.

Maybe half a perigee passes before you see him again; your little nubby brother who looked on you so keen and saw so deep into you. Who even asked your name. Half a perigee nights and days and doses and sleep, and less doses and less sleep.

The second time he's angrier, even more tired, and you're dragging on long days and smaller doses, floating on the bare edge of sober pain. You let yourself reach out as you get him laid down and you touch his hair, careful, not to break the miracle you've got by being allowed to touch him at all. He meets your eyes and something reaches between you and it damn near shakes you open.

You take your hand away and don't touch him like that again.

You'd forgotten how he cursed and how loud and how clumsy and how he kept stopping, asking little questions like he needs to be so sure, so very sure what sounds you make are the good kind. You almost ask him to not ask one time, because it makes you seize up inside when he does that; when he lets slip he keeps coming back to the same un-flushed place as you find yourself to be in. You're neither of you here for pailing but there are drones going from door to door and you press your face into his neck and stop answering his questions until he stops asking.

You're near to there and you can tell he's the same, when you hit the drop.

The threads of warm haze you been hangin' on to all this time snap like spider webs and you are falling, sudden and sharp, back into your cold bones, your aching horns, your own body and where you are and what you're doing—it _hurts, _sudden and sharp. You have a name for what you want on the tip of your tongue, you want something from that ain't this and you keen and snarl at the pain in your head, all crouched down over him like an animal and touching in all the wrong ways—

Your neck burns and bites like wasp-stings under your collar and you jerk away from him and claw at it but you can't reach it and the pain in your head gets so you think you're going to _die _and then…it just…

Your pusher slows and slows and slows until you can count the seconds between beats. Your eyes fall half shut as hot syrup runs all through you in these long, slow waves and you almost collapse on your bro, too heavy and warm to hold yourself up. Your thoughts are moving planet-slow, drifting, too lazy to keep up with what goes on outside your pan.

You close your eyes and just motherfucking _feel._

By the time you get somewhere close to speed, pail's gone in his modus and you're all bundled up in blankets. He cleaned you off while you were soaring off somewhere distant. You are so grateful for that, so very, very grateful, and you want to hold on to him and purr for it but moving is too much to ask right now.

You lie and breathe.

"You're awake," he says, after a time uncountable. You makes vague noises, all sort of searching around for your voice, and then finally make it all click together and croak, _yeah, bro._ "Now tell me what the _fuck_ that was."

You get a hand up (it's like liftin' the world above your head—_heavy, heavy, _heavy—)and tap your collar with one finger. He comes close, real close, so close you can count the little hardly-there spots on his cheeks, like the dark strayed off from the dark under his eyes to make little constellations. You want to hang on him and touch him, not like you did before but gentle. Gentle and with no purpose except to touch and calm that tired and angry out of him.

(_There's a word on the tip of your tongue, a word for what you want, a truth too terrible to let form_)

Your miracle-brother peers at the choke of your collar—he growls and you're so mellow now it don't even matter how close those teeth are with regards to your throat.

"What the fuck?" He demands again.

"…'s my moirail, see?" You explain, and laugh a little for no real reason as you can put into words. "…see? Like. Friendly little motherfucker. Gives me my dose when I get all harshed up on my bad self, calms me the fuck right down."

"Oh my god," says your bro, and it makes your smile stiff and fall to hear such a tone of distress in his shouty precious voice. He touches the thing like he's afraid it will burn his hands, and his fingers shake, claws all tiny skitters on your skin. "Oh god, oh _fuck_…are you—are you telling me, _seriously_, when I asked you if you had a palemate—?"

"It ain't got hands to pap, sure," you say, all manner of confused at how he shakes, worried by how he snarls. "—or any means to shoosh, but they said sopor'll do me better than shooshing anyway. They told me so, bro, they wouldn't lie to me." He's staring like he doesn't understand, so you add on, "…them's my friends, as who takes care of me." Because he's never met your friends, has he? He must've talked when he asked for you to come for him, but you don't have the first fucking idea how they make their deals and talks.

"That—you—" He's getting all rusty-cheeked, eyes wide, fangs bared and angry—you don't like it. It makes you want…

…_want_…

…you can't figure truly _what_ you're craving, so you just smile at him. Glance down as something in your heaped clothes buzzes, and whatever he was about to say gets choked off and lost when you drag yourself forward to pick up. It drives out some of the dizzy and dull in your pan, reminds you _if you want this to continue, you do as you should. Up now._

"Looks like I'm gonna go do a miracle," you say, but that makes him flinch so you add, real and honest sorry, "…I'd sure like to stay and shoot the wicked shit with you a little longer though, bro. Or maybe see you 'round here some time again?" You do hope, you do want to see him again, and you bite down on the part of you says this isn't what you want at all, that the last thing you want is the painful way he half-forces himself to touch you back. You pick up your palmhusk and look; they want you across town, some fancy place. _"come back+get clean,_" says the screen, and after all the dim and the comfort, the glare pounds at your eyes. "_3, brwn"_

Well, if that ain't a way to cap off a good day. You ain't so much averse to pailing black, but you prefer hearts, and it's been all hearts today. Nice to know the streak's set to continue. You stand and get cleaned up, kinda stiff-like, still with that weird pain in your guts, pull on your clothes and smile, confused deep inside with weird unhappy happiness.

He don't smile back, and you want to fix that but you have to go.

You leave him there unsmiling, and it hurts you to do.

Next week they sober you up entirely, tie you down and someone comes and does a cruel piece of work and they whisper the whole time _I heard you think you're important, you purple-blood piece of shit, I heard you still think you're better than us_—in the ache as you come clean of the last of your pills, those words burn right through into your core and stick there like hot irons.

You howl and snap and wish to tear at them but they just laugh. Later as you lie there, seeing things as ain't there, hearing whispers and twitching to hurt something, you realize that's what they wanted the whole time. Just to have a highblood at your angriest, pail you anyway and say they did. You have been well and truly used and you are _angry_.

Then your collar stings you again and you forget why.

Your bro calls again. You take longer and longer to get out of clothes, it's not drone season no more and he won't let you do a full job of work on him at all. You should be troubled at that, because it's what they sent you here for, but you can't find it in you to complain when you both know that ain't what either of you ever wanted from each other.

Most times you just sit and talk, talk for long whiles until you're called away again. He tells you he's expected to do things, things he doesn't want to do, that someone wants him to be a thing he ain't. You pat his shoulder and then feel a fool and go all warm in the face for reasons you don't fully understand. He asks and you tell him about the pills; the little green ones as are your favorite and all the others that come and go and change your feeling for the day. He gets so very sad and tired when you talk about what you do, though, so you don't like to.

You're curled up on your couch with a sopor patch on your arm one night, catching a wink or two when one of your friends comes in. She's got the nicest short hair and a sign on her shirt all in green, and when she nudges at you until you wake you're sleepy and warm-feeling and you smile at her.

"Hello there," she says, and she pets your hair. You sigh, enjoy it (_try not to feel as you're doing something wrong, like her hand shouldn't be there_) and she smiles back at you. "Um…we just…we wanted to talk to you. I'm sorry, I know you don't…get much sleep during the day—"

"Oh suck it up, Maryam," says another voice, and you turn and see your other friend in the door. She's got on blue tonight like every night and she looks all sorts of awake and, like, intense. You ain't equipped to deal with intensity on this particular night, but she's your friend and you like her, so you don't mention it. Takes another effort to peel the patch off your arm for the moment though. Goddamn but you were enjoying that nap. "It's not like he minds! You don't mind, do you?"

You don't really, not if you don't think about it. You grin and shrug. She laughs—a short little thing, all fangs—and looks at your green-eyed sister like she's saying 'see I told you'. The hand leaves your head. Your headache comes back.

"It's about that guy who keeps asking for you," says the blue-eyed one, and you don't have to so much as give it a thought before you realize exactly who she's making reference to. Just the thought of him makes a strange number of things happen deep in you. "The hemoanon."

You don't know why she's callin' him that—pretty sure that ain't his name, but whatever.

"…has he…do you know why he has been asking to see you so…repeatedly?" Your green sister looks worried. "…he hasn't been doing anything excessively unusual or disturbing, has he? Or contacting you outside of work, or—"

"Uhhh…"

You stall there. To tell the truth, 'unusual' is the way you sit in his room and talk about shit that don't even matter. Unusual is how he touched you, and still touches you sometimes, when you do pail—all gentle-like, not wanting at all. Unusual is…him.

They seem to see that you ain't got an answer for them—your green-eyed sister relaxes herself a little. She's been worryin' about you? You are mightily touched by the notion.

"He's a pretty shouty motherfucker, but he ain't bad at all," you say, which ain't the half of it—but you are still tired and they don't need to know the half of it. "He…"

You trail off there, and they both look at you as you mull over, considering your nubby little brother who gives you feelings so very backwards and confusing and strange. You're unsure of how those words want to go, because you ain't rightly sure what you mean to say at all.

"He just…to see me makes him awful sad," you say finally, and you remember the look in his eyes when he found out about the collar and pills you call your palemate. "…to touch me makes him…awful sad."

"If seeing you makes him so sad," says your blue-eyed sister, "—why the fuck does he keep asking for you?"

You can't give an answer for that, but you don't need to because your other sister steps in and says, all quiet, "…sometimes people do things over and over again, even though they know it's going to hurt. Because it's better than not doing them, or they're expecting a different outcome, or...for love—any number of reasons." She looks at you, and she has got eyes very very even, very clear. You can't not but trust her."…is there anything…interesting about him? Different?"

_He has blood the color of miracles._

And you open your mouth to say that when his voice sounds up in your head instead, clear like he's talkin' over your shoulder, and you see again the scared way he fussed over that bite on his shoulder, how he covered it and covered it and covered it. _You don't know me. You didn't see anything._

"…not such as comes to mind, sister," you say, and the lie comes out smooth and slick as slime on your tongue. "Not as comes to mind."

You feel a scraping and a pushing at your pan and you sink down in the fog in your thoughts, all hiding away; she hisses at you but you ain't so fond of when she reaches into you and pulls you out, and your other sister done told you that you shouldn't do too many things as makes you truly uncomfortable. So you hold firm on that one.

"It makes me all motherfucking unsettled when you do that," you tell her—but she just keeps shoving, so you haul ass out of the fog in your head and just…push back.

She gasps, all shocked and angry and you kinda wince because fuck, that may have come on a little bit too strong, you didn't mean to get her all pissed. And then there's this sharp jolt all through and you're pitched back onto the couch, blinking. Takes a second for you to realize, all distant and dizzy, she's hit you; back of her hand, knobbly blue knuckles and worn-up painted claws. Your cheek chimes in to sting, but not nearly so much as you can tell she hoped. You are sorry for your numbness—you don't want her to be angry with you like that, it twists up your bile sac and makes your head hurt.

"You're a dumb _fuck_, Makara!" Your friend snaps, and she spins and storms out with anger in her shoulders and her heavy striding. You are upset as well, for her upset; your sister with the kind eyes puts her hand on your shoulder and tells you a few words of comfort, _it's okay, she's just in a bad mood, I'll talk to her, get some sleep_—and you nod and smooth your patch back on your arm.

You sink again, and you dream your brother is huge—or you're small—and you're cradled up in his hands and hidden away from all of everything.

You sleep well that time, and do not wake uneasy.

"My friends been asking questions about you," says your purple-blood—_the_ purpleblood, he's not _yours_ and that's stupid, stupid, _stupid—_and he looks melancholy and perplexed over all of these new challenges in his life. There is a deep, nasty bruise on one of his cheeks, and you _burn_. "…but I didn't tell them about all those miracles you got inside, bro, no worries. I recalled you weren't the type as likes to have that spread around."

Someone has been asking questions. The bruise on his face. The long delay in the answer of your request.

Things piece together and you don't like where they're going.

But first things first, and somehow this has become the first thing.

"Well good for you, you actually kept your trap shut for once in your life," you say, and he already knows you enough to smile a little at that, like it means what you wish it meant because you are incapable of just saying _thank you good job you're a stupid godawful _brave _son of a bitch_. "…did they hurt you?"

"Huh? Oh…nah." He blinks up at you, all big moony purple eyes and dopey grin. You can tell he's lying, because how the fuck does he expect you to believe he got that bruise, falling down on his way to a job? And the worst part is you know if you push him he'll tell you. He's too high to come up with a lie right now, even a bad one.

They've been doping him more heavily now, ever since a few visits ago. Sometimes he can barely make his way from one end of a sentence to the other. Sometimes he's in a weak-kneed, panting mess from whatever they've fed him, pupils blown wide, clammy-faced and desperate—those are the times you have to pail him, still, and even when he's naked and you're doing your best to help him through whatever they've given him it feels like you're taking care. Like you're soothing him, pacifying him.

You refuse to think this. Your heart is beating fast enough as it is. You settle down on the bed, and he keeps an eye on you but doesn't make a move to get your clothes off, or his own. You never get over the weird shock that goes through you when you see his hands resting on his knees, pale grey and spidery-thin with knobbly, protruding knuckles. His wristbones stand out under his skin. He's a mess of bones and drugs and blind optimism, you're a freak on the run from people who want you to be—

…well. Anyway.

You sit and contemplate the two of you sitting side by side, and it comes to mind how utterly disastrous you both are.

"Those people who are looking for me almost found me again today."

The words choke out into the air and for a second you wish you could swallow them back down, but he doesn't judge or ask or try to push for more. He leans a little and looks at you and says, "…I thought you looked outta your chill, my brother."

-which is ridiculous, because you have never had a 'chill' to be 'up in' and how the fuck would he know you well enough to tell by now? You swat him on the arm—he huffs out a little laugh and you think you see his hand twitch a little like he wants to give you a friendly hit back. He doesn't.

"I know you don't want what they want you to all up and want," he says, and you jump a little, on edge. Your blood is still thundering in your ears. "…but I just gotta know really quick, bro, is somebody out to do you harm? Like, bearing some real serious ill will on you, y'know?"

You have to admit, at least, that whatever you hate about Him (the douchebag who you hate, _platonically), _hisheadhunters have never tried to drag you in by force. Although now that he's put a bounty on your head, there are going to be a lot more people looking for you and you doubt they'll be as scrupulous. You are completely aware he just wants to know where you are so he can _talk _at you, but the rest of the opportunistic douchebags who are going to be after you now have no way of knowing that.

You'll be lucky if nobody tries to beat the shit out of you and drag you to him.

"I don't know what they'll do if they get me," you snap, and he frowns. You bristle. "Stop looking at me like that! God, how the fuck is it even your business?!"

"Whoa," he starts, taken aback. "Man, hey—"

"_Get. Away." _He doesn't move away, doesn't stand up, and his presence is suddenly suffocating, he's here fo—you _asked_ him here to— "—I said_ GET AWAY FROM ME!_"

"Bro," he says, and reaches out for you, like he's going to try to soothe you, like he's trying to _pap_ you and _holy fucking god_, this can't be happening no no no that look in his eyes can't be what you think it is, that same feeling you're been fighting with this whole time, this _can't be happening_— "—bro, for serious, it's okay. C'mon, motherfucker, _shhh_—"

You smack his hand away. He flinches back, eyes going wide and shocked and the shock and betrayal in his eyes drills right into you and tears at you like claws. "_Get away from me!_" you snarl at him (_because you _can't, _the two of you, it's a thing that _can't happen_ and if he touches you you're not going to be able to tell him to stop)_ "—don't you fucking dare!"

He huddles up and goes small, pulling his hands away like you've burned him. "_Sorry_," he mumbles. "…sorry, I didn't—sorry."

But he only pulls away for a second before he worries at his lip and reaches for you again and this time even though you forget to watch your claws and they catch and tear at one of his hands, he doesn't flinch back. He reaches for you with blood running down his arm, and his hand threads through your hair and strokes your cheek and some part of you tries to fall to pieces.

"_Bro,_" he says again, and he wants this so badly, so very, very badly—you can see it in his eyes. "_Shhhh. _It'll be okay, I swear to you, you'll be okay, I…I'll…"

"Like you can talk," you snap back at him, and he winces. "You pan-dead moron, you're basically hopeless, you're a goddamn pitiable _wreck_!"

He smiles, but it's not the same dopey grin he's smiled at you so many times before. It looks pained. "You proposin' some shit of a pitying nature to me here? Because—" he opens his mouth—shuts it again, and then takes a deep breath. "…because if that—if they're red, I can't—I don't—"

Oh god no you can't do this, but you can't _not _do this because if you don't do this—

…if you don't do this you think you're going to die.

"Now you're the one getting worked up," you say instead, and wow, it's hard to talk around the massive lump that appears to have taken up residence in your squawk blister. "…sh—_shoosh,_ you disgusting cold-blooded freak. Don't make me pap you."

The look on his face makes a jolt of actual, physical pain shoot through you, and then a wave of absolute relief and warmth—and then more pain, and it won't _stop_.

"—what if I—uh…" he fidgets, and then grins at you, hopeful and almost scared. "…what if I kinda _want_—"

You throw yourself forward and hug him hard.

The next few minutes, or hours, or _nights_, are a mess. You're lost in a tangle of hands touching and exchanging touches, shooshing and murmuring and oh god this is probably a full-on feelings jam isn't it, but you don't really give a fuck. You tell him so many things you know he's barely going to remember, you pour everything out even though you know there's no way it's a good idea. He's just…he's a concupiscent _hire_ and you've only known him for a perigee and a half, but here you are babbling to him about your freakish blood and your stupid fucking ancestor. You tell him about how you can't stay anywhere for more than half a sweep, you tell him how you had to stop contacting everyone you've ever been friends with, you tell him how hard it is to make your way when you can't tell anyone the color of your blood.

He mostly holds on and mumbles indistinct, sleepy words of encouragement (_and secrets, so quiet you almost don't hear him, secrets that make you want to _cry) and for some reason that makes it easier.

Your legs end up tangled together at some point; by the time you run out of shit to say for a moment his arm is wrapped around your waist and your fingers are working absently around his horns. You're close, finally so _close_ to someone, but both of you still dressed with no urge to change that and he's got his face buried in your shoulder and it is so much fucking better than you ever even dreamed it would be.

And then your other hand trails slowly down the side of his face and your fingertips brush cold metal.

The jolt of protective pity runs right through you like a stab in the guts before you can even comprehend what you're feeling or figure out why it makes you hurt inside. Then you remember, and all of a sudden a throb of possessive anger runs through you.

He called this fucking thing his _moirail_.

You sit up a little and he shifts into the warm spot you left—sighs as you keep rubbing his horns, and goes still. That's good. He's constantly exhausted, if you can be sneaky enough you might even be able to get the thing off of him without waking him up. You make sure to keep one hand on his head, letting him drift off further and further, and trace your fingers along the metal until you—ah. There's a tiny catch on the back. Nothing he couldn't open on his own if he wanted to, but why would he want to? It gives him '_them good feelings_', _'the buzz'_, _'the fog_'. He's been on drugs for so long you're surprised he even has a functioning pan still—or at least, functioning enough to walk and talk (inanely) and breathe and occasionally even come out with startling flashes of insight that always make you feel a little off-balance. He shifts and mumbles a little as you feel out the contours of the dull metal.

Then you flick the catch open and immediately he goes tense all over. He starts to jerk upright, he paws weakly at your hands, but you shoosh him and pet his horns and he goes shivers still again. He looks terrified.

"—bro, no—!"

"You'll be okay," you tell him, and he shakes his head fast and jerky, swallowing hard. "You don't need them."

"No, that's not—"

And then you flick open the collar and your hands are slippery and wet.

Two thick needles on the inside of the collar drip purple blood and lime-green sopor concentrate across your floor as you drop it in sudden shock. He makes a choked, panicking noise and grabs for his throat; there's a massive purple stain growing on his chest, coating his hands as he grasps helplessly at the horrible deep holes in his neck.

For a second you're paralyzed, but you're used to the smell of blood and cleaning it up quickly, even if it makes you sick—you jump up and race across the room to your first aid kit, swearing the whole way.

By the time you pump styptic gel messily into the wounds he's very pale and his eyes are half-shut and unfocused; the bloodflow slows but doesn't stop as the gel hardens. He's not living by the minute now, but he's still in serious trouble if you don't get him to some kind of…if he doesn't…

There's only one person you can go to.

You still have the number you were given last time you talked to The One You Hate—the time when you screamed curses in his face and stomped out—you've never quite brought yourself to delete it.

He picks up on the first ring.

"Nitram," you say, "—I swear to god if you say a word or ask any stupid fucking questions, if I hear a single fucking _um _or a stutter then this deal is off. You want to talk? I'll talk. But you have to do me a favor first…

Your name is Tavros Nitram and you really aren't the emperor, seriously at all.

…but since everybody keeps insisting so much and treating you like you are, you suppose that makes it kind of pointless to keep saying so?

Since everybody's going to treat you like you're in charge anyway, you've done your best. The Sufferer's heir is someone you've wanted on your side for a long time; there are plenty of people that supported the Summoner in his coup, but a lot more who followed him because they believed in the Sufferer and he looked up to the Sufferer and you guess they assumed that there would be more…well…Sufferer. Involved in the rebellion.

Karkat is short, square, hard as horns and it only really takes a second of watching him to finally understand how one troll has stubbornly resisted every single advance you've made to him for more than a sweep. He has that look you see on murderers and martyrs—a sort of harrowed determination, like he's dead set on something and he's not going to let anything get in his way.

People with that kind of determination kind of scare you, a little, but he doesn't attack you on sight at least.

The purpleblood he called you in to save is curled up when you come in, still unconscious, and Karkat's just sitting there watching him. He looks up when you come in and bares some teeth at you but it's not nearly up to his usual standards, as far as snarling goes. You've seen about a thousand scarier things since they made you ruler, anyway. You sit, and wait for him to say the first word.

It doesn't take him long.

"I fucking hate you."

Well that isn't all that surprising, he's already told you that. It's a little bit disheartening though.

"I know," you say, and then, frankly, "…it sucks. I wish you didn't."

"That is exactly the kind of retarded shit I'm talking about," he snaps, "—you're so fucking _sensitive_, it's disgusting. How the hell are you still the emperor, do you, like, cry yourself to sleep over the state of the outer planets? Read every single complaint letter from every corner of the empire?"

"Sometimes," you say uncomfortably. "…and yes. I do. Actually I have people who, um…read them for me and screen the similar ones so I can get a consolidated version of every—" He's glaring at you. "…was that a rhetorical question, um…meant to antagonize me?"

"Fuck you."

"Yes, I got that part."

You sit there in angry silence for a while. The purpleblood shifts a little in his sleep, arms and legs and eyes twitching minutely as he dreams whatever fever-dreams he's getting from the withdrawal.

You've been getting reports about what they're finding in the substance sample from the collar Karkat took off of him. It makes you…tired.

"…I'm going to need to talk to him when he wakes up," you say, eventually, and Karkat twitches. "Not a lot, just…what he was doing is illegal, you know. There's a system for that kind of thing, and registrations and a required minimum pay, all sorts of things. And getting people to work for free and coercion with drugs and things is definitely, uh…outside the system. Like, _far_ outside the system."

"Didn't take too much _coercion_," Karkat grumbles, still not looking at you. "…he's a moron. Never even asked for money, just went 'Oh, you want me to go pail some random guy and you'll give me drugs? Awesome!' Fucking unbelievable."

"A lot of people that blood level can't get work," you say, kind of pushing a little bit, and you see his eyes flick up to you and back away again. "A lot of them can't get proper schoolfeeding either, so they don't know this kind of thing is wrong, that there's more options than the ones they take. I mean, most of the ones who know about the laws make good money this way, but on their own terms and screening their own customers…I guess it's all about…uh…novelty value?" You know you're keeping your voice steady, but you also know your ears are turning brown. You cough a little, awkwardly. "I'm trying to get actual equality to stick, instead of…basically just the old hemospectrum in reverse, but trolls…"

You trail off, not sure how to say what you mean, and he hisses between his teeth.

"…trolls are basically a bunch of nook-sucking pestilent boils on the seedflap of the universe," he…finishes for you. You guess. That's not what you were going to say, but alright, you suppose that gets the point across? "Okay, Nitram, what are you actually here for?"

"That's it," you say, honestly. "I just wanted to let you know, I need to talk to him. And also, give you some idea of why I've been, uh…bugging you so much. Sorry. I wish I could leave you alone about this, but it's important, for the empire."

He glares at you. You give him the most innocent sorry look you have, and he only holds your eyes for a few seconds before groaning and dragging a hand down his face, exasperated beyond words.

"How do you even stay sane, Nitram?"

"Because," you say, and for a second you hesitate—but you just have a feeling and you advance, a little timidly, "…I have a really good moirail."

His eyes flicker back to the purpleblood. His face goes rusty red.

Yeah. That's what you figured, pretty much.

"Your quadrantmates are just as welcome here as you are," you tell him, and haul yourself to your feet slowly, stifling a groan—the muscles around your wings are cramped from leaning over your desk all day, you have to go find someone who you can trust to rub your back. Well, speaking of your wonderful palemate…? "Just…think about it?"

He doesn't answer, but he doesn't growl at you either, and you glance back in the doorway just in time to see him reach out a little and thread his fingers through the purpleblood's and hold on.

You wake up sore and nasty with the kinda headache that means you're sober, and you are fucking freezing.

You work through all the bits you can feel and move everything a little, just to test what hurts. Nothing really. Everything, sort of. Your neck, kind of a lot.

And motherfuck, but you are _starving_.

You're on a couch. Not your couch. Not a couch you know. You're wearing clothes as you don't recognize. Your collar has been replaced by bandages, wrapped nice and neat around your throat where the metal used to go.

This is…weird. Okay. You would normally be pretty chill with waking up in a weird place, but you're sober and you are having severe issues with being chill. You feel in danger. You feel _vulnerable_.

You feel like one of your hands is really warm.

You turn your head some—neck burns, and you remember how it felt the first time they put the collar on you, told you to _never take it off, never_—and you find a scrubby little head of hair and two nubby little horns. He's holding on tight to your hand and his head is leaned up on the couch next to you.

You get a hand lifted and dropped and touch his horns, and he makes tiny noises in his sleep, little chirps and happy sounds. Settles into a purr, all rusty like the color his face turns when he's embarrassed at you. You have a sudden, mighty need to do this more often; make him soft like this, open, not scared of himself. This precious, shouty, angry, sad little brother of yours.

It's such a beautiful thing, this troll disease called moiraillegiance.

You get in a few good, soft, endless minutes of petting, and he's pretty much all melted by the time your claws accidentally clatter-click on his horn and he jumps and jerks up. You are sad about that, for motherfucking sure. It was starting to send you right back to sleep, listening to him purr and running your fingers through his tufty hair.

"I—wha—" he blinks around, looks just as confused as you were when you woke up—then his eye falls on you and he sits up and all straight, like he's nervous. Man, you just had him all shooshed, what the motherfuck has he got himself tensed up about now? "—oh. Oh, you, uh. Hi."

"Hey, man," you say, and he tries to sit up and pull his hand away. You hold on, because you don't want to let go. He goes red again. Does that an awful motherfuckin' lot for someone who doesn't want folks to know his color of blood, but hey, the first time you saw it you figured him for rust. No reason someone else wouldn't do the same.

"I'm sorry."

He blurts it out like he's been waitin' to say it, which is motherfuckin' weird because you can't even think of a thing he'd be sayin' sorry for, let alone something so important as he'd have to wait next to you to tell you. Goddamn but you are tired.

"Sorry for what, bro?" You yawn, and he looks terrible worried. You don't like it.

"I shouldn't have taken—I should have listened to you," he says. "I shouldn't have taken that collar off you, you knew it was a bad idea—"

_(Your blood slipping through your fingers, all down your arms, pouring down and sudden, cold terror _don't want to die—)

Oh.

"…yeah, I guess you should've," you say, and your voice comes out just a touch more cold than you would have wanted; he hunches down in his chair, upright motherfucking miserable. You soften up and sit forward a little, unhappy with his face in that twisted up expression. "—no, don't motherfuckin' do that, bro. Good to have the thing gone, for all I've got a killer ache in my pan, and there wasn't a way to get it off without bleedin' me like that. I'm just, uh…" And all of a sudden, _whoa_, is that how embarrassed feels? Shit, you forgot, you been hazy and chill for so long and now all of a sudden your skin feels all weird and hot and you fall over the words. "—'m just glad it was you, okay?"

He goes redder. You stay purple.

He seems to remember something. He scoots forward towards you in his chair, and you see the steeling-up in his shoulders as he meets your eyes square and solid. "I never said," he says. "I'm, uh…Karkat. Vantas." He sort of reaches a hand, letting it hang in the air. "And. Yeah. You already know I'm a freak. Not that that's a big secret now, I guess. And. I. Uh. I'm. _Goddammit_." More deep breathing. But when he looks up at you again his words come out clear and sharp and certain. "I'm pale for you. Okay?"

There is a lot going on there and you can't parse it out because thinking is hard, but that still makes something huge and weird and warm blow up inside your thorax and you have trouble breathing to mumble back, "Gamzee Makara—_bro, I am so pale back for your miraculous motherfucking self you have_ no idea," and reach out for his hand.

You miss.

You both stare at your hands for a second, just kinda hangin' there in the air a few inches from each other, and then all of a sudden he makes this weird noise and—oh.

Oh, he's laughing and it's a funny hard, sharp little noise and it makes your head feel all full of warm air. You laugh too, and it makes your throat hurt but it feels so good, so very motherfucking good.

"Get some sleep, you pan-shattered disaster," he says, when the laughter finally dies out, and he reaches over and picks up a patch. "—wow, fuck, this stuff is like 99.999% pure." He directs a look at you and you have that feeling again—you are _seen_. "…If you put this in your mouth then _so help me god, _I am going to reach up your nook and turn you inside-out by the horns. Go to sleep."

You can't help it—you laugh again, and you're still laughing as things go warm and hazy and slowly dim to blackness.

You wake up again and there are lights on, soft yellow ones, and your bro is making wicked noise. Wow, but he's got a way to use words. He's bawling out some poor motherfucker as you can't really see—bawling him out quiet-like, for him, but still loud enough as it makes your head buzz a bit.

"Bro," you say, and your throat kinda pipes up a little in favor of not moving too much—you clear it a bit and try again. "_Bro_."

He don't hear you. You frown, prickly mad all of a sudden; raise your voice and snarl at him. "Motherfucker, _get your fucking chill on_."

He turns for that. Notices you're awake, see you ain't happy, and leaves off shouting without another word. The angry fades away again, too heavy to take its own weight, and you flop back as he comes over and sits down in the one chair that's sitting there, then levels a truly motherfucking terrible look at the guy he was talking to, like he wants him to fight about it. He don't, apparently, because he don't weigh in or come over.

"Hey," he says, a little awkward, kind of harsh but kind of soft. "Feel any better?"

"A shitload," you say, and not just to ease off the tight look on his face. Whatever was in that patch, it's done miracles. Even your throat is barely sore still. "what's goin' on? Where are we?" You blink, and then finally think to worry. "…my friends know where I'm at? Hate to make 'em worry."

Your brother's teeth go tight, but he doesn't yell at you. "We're across the city from where I was staying before," he says, and you kinda want to sit up and shoosh until he stops talking through his teeth like that, but you're still heavy and numb and you elect to not for the moment. "Your…_friends_—fucking—_ugh_, whatever. We'll find them, don't worry about them."

"That's another thing I meant to tell you," says a voice, and both of you turn. It's the other motherfucker, as Karkat was getting all salty on when you woke up. "We found them. Vriska Serket and Kanaya Maryam. Cerulean and Jade, we're, uh…well, I already sent someone out to get them, we can talk to them later."

You consider him, and find him to be…big. Yeah. Big. Tall, broad, strong and solid lookin' with _wow_ holy _shit_ massive horns, check out this motherfucker. You can't figure his color for a second, then you catch up in his eyes and they are brown, so very, very brown. He's got golden rings hangin' from his ears and one in his nose and he looks all tired and kinda sad and worried, which is a shame since he's got a smile so very nice.

Karkat doesn't seem to like him, though, which worries. But he doesn't start yelling at him either, so maybe he's just cranky tonight? Bro's a mystery.

"Gamzee," says Karkat, all sort of snippy and cold and nasty, "—this is the—"

"Tavros Nitram." The brother with the big horns talks over him really loud and fast and they they stare at each other for a second like, _damn_, there's all sorts of crazy shit going on here you can't even begin to _contemplate_. Karkat looks mightily pissed again.

Tavros Nitram turns back around to you and smiles, and you are not accustomed to having folks smile at you like they're a little nervous of you, it ain't a thing as normally happens. Not like he's scared you'll bite or like he don't want to be talkin' to you, but like he makes a big fucking deal of your regard.

"My name is Tavros Nitram," he says again; clears his throat and holds out a hand to shake. You take it, really slow, trying to get a read on him and why this and here and now, and then get distracted really sudden by how fuckin' _warm_ his hands are. "Sorry I heard you were in…some trouble? So Karkat called me to help."

So he's a hate-friend? Hard to tell with your bro when he screams at all the same.

Something hums; Tavros reaches down and pulls out a shiny little palmhusk. Turns to Karkat.

"…they have them," he says, and smiles at you, really nice and reassuring. "You can go talk to them now, ask the guard outside the door. Gamzee, can we walk? If you feel up to it, or if you prefer, you can sleep some more, I wouldn't be surprised if you were tired—"

You swing your legs off the couch and find they'll bear your weight. You've got a spare finger's width on him height-wise and hornless, but he's got shoulders much broader than yours and he looks solid. Makes you better, having him there, as does all his worry and care. Right nice motherfucker.

"Don't know how much motherfuckin' help I can be," you warn him, and he smiles regardless.

"Then we can just talk?" He says—and your bro Karkat can make questions into orders, this guy can make every word into a question. He intrigues your eye and mind and you follow him on and out as Karkat breaks off from you with one last little pap on your shoulder and goes to talk all quiet-like to a brother with a pair of totally sweet-lookin' shades and badass horns. Motherfucker is also tall! You've found a place all full of tall people.

You wave a little at him; he gives you a look over the tops of his glasses and he's got eyes as match his glasses! Motherfuckin' miraculous. Doesn't wave back, but doesn't sneer at you either. Karkat waves you off, gives you the little head-jerk as means _get your ass moving then! _Tavros is standing waiting for you, all sort of nervous smiling.

You think you like it here.

Your name is Kanaya Maryam, and you are feeling the eventual and unfortunate results of blind devotion.

You do not recognize the uniforms of the people who brought you to this place, but you do not think they are standard law enforcement—if only because the standard law enforcement does not do much in general, even to people who have committed much more serious and public crimes than you and Vriska. (Mostly Vriska, you have to admit to yourself.)

You do not recognize the short, angry troll who comes storming in a few minutes after you are taken to a room and left alone there, but his voice does sound vaguely familiar.

The first thing he says is, "—you're the fuckers who've been hiring out Gamzee Makara."

Oh.

You are keenly aware of the tension that grows in your shoulders as he walks closer. Vriska, on the other hand, lets out a raucous laugh and slumps back in her chair.

"What, bad service?" She drawls, and waves a hand dismissively. "…I can get you a half-price refund or something, you didn't have to go to all this trouble—"

"One," says the customer, and points a finger at her so sharp and sudden it's like an attack. "_Shut the fuck up_, he hasn't done anything wrong and I hate you. _Two_, you're not here because I got a bad fuck, you're here because you are a pair of sick exploitative bitches and you have done some sick nasty shit to his thinkpan!"

"Yeah, like he has two functioning braincells to rub together anyway," scoffs Vriska, and smirks at him. "—you're the hemoanon, aren't you? Listen, asshole, he signed a _contract_. "

"Oh, I bet he signed a _FUCKING CONTRACT!_" the anonymous customer roars at her, and you jump a little. His voice is sudden and powerful for his stocky build, and there's a certain…a sort of _passion_ in him that makes you feel like you're looking at the sun. You remember the distant, wistful expression on Gam—on _Makara's_ face when you asked him about his customer and think maybe you're starting to understand a little of what's going on. "What, you held his hand and made his signature for him while he was too high to fucking _talk_? Or did you just jump into his head and take a little ride?!"

"Oh, like it even matters." Vriska yawns—you see it for what it is, a careful show of how completely _uniiiiiiiinterested_ she is, but he snarls. His almost nonexistent horns are tipped forward, he's showing all his teeth, his hands are clenching and unclenching like he wants to claw her. If she pushes him much further, there's going to be a fight, and Vriska is very strong, of course she is, but something about his strangely infallible confidence makes you very, very uneasy.

"I'm sure we can negotiate," you try, and the customer whips around to direct that fearsome glare at you instead. His eyes are round and angry and red—in the light they look oddly bright, _bizarrely_ bright.

"I don't want to _negotiate_," he hisses. "I want you to pay him back for _every single time _you took advantage of him!"

_That_ makes Vriska sit up. "Come on! What the fuck?!" She shoots onto her feet and gets in his personal space, leaning till they're nose to nose—she's just barely taller than him but he's broader than her and he's not backing down. "He's a _purple-blood_. He's street trash!"

"He's my fucking _palemate_!"

"Oh well let me just patch up your bleeding heart for you!" Vriska snarls back, and you jump up and situate yourself between them before you even have time to think about it.

"Vriska," you say, soft and warning, and Vriska hisses at you. You glance back over your shoulder. "—Sir, please, I would very much prefer that we discuss this in a civil way!"

The customer is breathing hard—you think you see the glint of rusty tears at the corners of his eyes before he draws himself up and glowers up at you.

"_Fine," _he says. "_Civil_. Great."

Vriska sneers and throws herself back into her chair with bad grace, but the immediate danger of a fight goes out of the air.

"Now," you say, as soothingly as possible, and try not to feel like you're every desperate auspistice ever, throwing yourself between two people with no clue how to keep them from tearing you and each other apart. "…I believe you're saying that you have become fond of Gam—of our—" you stop, perplexed, and then shake your head and carry on. "…anyway. I can understand why you would expect some form of recompense for his work—I believe we can arrange that. However, the full amount of payment for all the work he has ever done unpaid is not feasible. Because—!" you hold up a hand as he draws breath to start screaming again. "—_because_ the money used to keep his habits well-supplied must be taken from the pay he would have used to buy the necessary pills anyway. I am not saying that our employment was morally sound, but I would also point out that, without our assistance it is likely that he would have overdosed himself or bought lower quality, dangerous drugs without knowing better."

The customer glowers at you.

"…and who addicted him to those in the _first fucking place_?" He asks, grating and guttural, and you can't look him in the eyes.

"I know," you say, and your voice comes out much smaller than you intended. "—and I know that we are likely to see severe punishment for…for what we did to him. But for the sake of…our continued well-being afterwards—" and you have to resist the urge to glance back at Vriska at that, but you can't suppress the way your eyes flick to one side and he blinks and then stares at you harder, like he's trying to read some message that you didn't know you were sending. You swallow hard, and soldier on. "…I would rather like to keep enough money to take care of us, sir."

"…Maryam, right."

It's not a question. You don't try to answer, and he doesn't give you time.

"Maryam, do you know how that collar you fitted on my _moirail_ worked?"

The collar was not your idea, but you do know the basics. "…when he became agitated, the collar would release a small dose of sopor into a vein in his neck," you say, and the customer tosses his head sharply, baring his teeth—even without horns the body language of the gesture reads clearly and you find your hands curving to take full advantage of your claws. You curb the impulse. "—what?"

He picks something up from the couch he was sitting on when you arrived and shoves it into your hands; it's…

"You see those needles?" He snarls, and you turn the collar over in your hands. You do indeed. They are very sharp, angled to cut skin, almost absurdly wide and you remember how Gamzee barely talked for days after Vriska put that on him, how you assumed he was just lethargic from the increased level of sopor in his bloodstream. "That thing went off once while I was with him, he…" his lip curls at the memory, but not just in disgust—there's a sort of pain there as well. "…he wasn't _there _anymore, like he passed out but kept moving. You know how much sopor it would take to do that?"

You turn to Vriska; she doesn't look phased, but neither is she denying it, and there is bile rising in your throat.

"Oh my god, Vriska," you manage to keep your voice almost steady, but it's an enormous effort. "—Vriska, you said we were going to take care of him—"

"We _did_ take care of him!" Vriska rolls her eyes. "—jeez, you guys are so _naïve,_ it's like I'm talking to a pair of whiny pupas! Look. That idiot couldn't have found himself a job if one came up and bit him in the ass, let alone a place to stay or food or the kind of drugs we got for him! God."

"Maybe I should let him come in here now that he's not drugged out of his mind and you can _explain _that to him," he snaps, and Vriska's hand tightens almost imperceptibly on the arm of her chair.

She lied to you.

She lied to you about everything, every reason what you were doing was okay, every assurance that softened the _wrong_ of what you were doing, she _lied_ and she is not sorry.

"Sir," you say, and it takes everything you have not to look at her again, to remember why you have done what you did and why you are doing what you are about to do. "…I would like to answer any questions you might have. And…and I have the ledgers. The money exchanges. Everything."

You hear Vriska start to curse, start to yell at you. It doesn't matter. You _refuse_ to let it matter.

Not this time.

Your name is Karkat Vantas and if you are going to be a leader you are going to damn well _lead._

Your name is Tavros Nitram and you're so much happier as a friend than as an emperor.

Your name is Kanaya Maryam and you have done what's best for the girl you loved.

Your name is Gamzee Makara, and this time miracles have happened to you.

_I was a heavy heart to carry,_

_My beloved was weighed down._

"Heavy in Your Arms", Florence and the Machine

* * *

**On AO3 this is a series of fics with different titles and different warnings etc, but there's no good way to do a series on the Pit of Voles, so I'm gonna just make every fic its own chapter. 8T So, 12,000+ word chapters it is, then. In the meantime, make sure you look out for the warnings, characters and pairings at the top of each chapter; they will change as the fic goes on. **


	2. A Heavy Crown

**Length**: 11,422 words

**Characters/Pairings**: Gamzee/Tavros, pale Gamzee/Karkat, and some Eridan Ampora, but he doesn't go by name. :D

**Warnings**: Mentions of prostitution, drug abuse, and vaguely suspect material of a vaguely sexual manner. Nothing explicit.

**Notes**: about this point in the series is where I lost control of my life.

Reminder again: THE HEMOSPECTRUM IS NOT REVERSED. This is why Tavros is in charge: the Summoner succeeded in his rebellion, and subsequently abolished the hemospectrum. The appearance of a reversed hemospectrum is just due to bias and bigotry.

But anyway, back to our valiant main characters.

* * *

Your name is Gamzee Makara, and a handful of weeks and some weird motherfuckin' days ago you had no idea what you were missing out on.

You are awake, alive, and your pan is aching but missing those little jumps and glitches and fogs that made it so hard to think in straight lines before. Of course, straight lines still ain't really an easy motherfucking proposition, but you're getting the hang of at least only staggering a little from thought to thought. And you just left a troll behind in the room you woke in as wants to be your moirail and you find that the most miraculous motherfucking thing as ever occurred. And you are walking with a troll, has a smile so very fucking warm and eyes big and brown and looks to be the like of blood color you'd never even see normal-like. But here he is, all smiling that warm smile at you, and for some reason for all the warm, it's makin' you shiver. He's walkin' you through hallways much bigger than you've ever been in, pretty plain but just _big_ is all, and you wonder a little where you are.

Ain't your place to wonder. You just smile and be grateful, do your best not to all unbalance what must have balanced so sweet on some thread out there in the universe, that you're here in the warm—awake, alive.

Oh and he's talkin' to you. Yeah.

"—sorry," your new bro Tavros says, when you blink and jump a little bit. "You look like you're pretty much asleep even though you're standing up, so you must be really tired I guess."

You are motherfuckin' wiped and you feel as like your bones is all full of knees and elbows where they oughtn't to be, so you wobble all over like you're high again. But hey, you'll do fine. "I'll bide," you say, and then kinda spoil the truth of that as you yawn so big all your bones creak. Your legs decide to wobble off all sorts of ways as were not in your instructions to them, and you make peace with the fact of the floor's soon-to-be close and personal knowing of your face—

A pair of real solid, warm arms catches you sudden and sure and hauls you upright. Your new friend tries to let you go, face all brown, once you're upright; your legs find that motherfucking hilarious and show off all their giggles and subtlest mockery by tipping you right over towards the ground again before he does more than step away. He catches you again and this time he hangs on.

"Is this okay?" He asks, fidgety, and you find it to be very much so. He is warm. He is something to lean on. He is so _warm_. No you already noticed that, but it bears to be noticed again reason being _fucking _warm, _mmm. _"I mean, I wouldn't want to, uh…to make you, um…"

You lean your head on his shoulder and sort of snort and laugh into his chest, because everything is really bright and loud and funny. You think you get out words tellin' him you feel _just motherfucking faaaantastic_ but you can't get your certainty on of that because everything is going syrupy and fuzzy and too fast for your pan.

Feels familiar.

Feels high.

"…oh," he says somewhere, far off and worried, and you feel him hitch you up a little, fidgets an arm right 'round you and pull you along next to him. "…um…it's a 'flashback', I think I heard, you should probably lie down. Um…here."

You close your eyes, and let him carry your weight.

You talk to Karkat about it later, and you find out you were just smiling and yawning and you fell over, had to be hauled to a couch and left there for a while till you stopped laughing and slurring random shit like sense was a thing what you took a giant fucking some-kind-of-leap off of. Karkat came and went, and you tried to tell him something about the color of brown, which you can't fathom what it was because you were basically not at home in your pan right then.

God, shit's embarrassing. You weren't ever embarrassed of things before, it wasn't exactly a thing you missed. And when he comes knocking again, looking big and sad-happy and tired and sweet as he ever did, you have some large amount of trouble meeting his eyes for the first handful of minutes. You're all ready for the serious big questions.

"…Have you ever had cluckbeast soup?" He asks instead, and instead of serious big questions, you are miraculously provided with glorious nourishment that makes your eyes well up with just plain how fucking _good _it is. And he smiles at you, and doesn't ask.

He still don't ask, don't push too hard for answers on any single thing, as weeks go past. You spend more time talking about dumb shit together than doing the serious big questions he said he'd have to ask you, and he always quits the second you start to get jumpy over the whole ordeal. You throw out some slam poetry for the first time in fucking ever, and he comes back in kind and fucking hell if it ain't just the cutest shit with all his little pauses and stumbles. It's rad and you like it a whole ton, so you make sure you rap with him a lot more after that and you think he has a time as bitchin' as you do.

It feels like a sweep later, but it's more like a half-perigee when he kinda settles down next to you all serious, and he finally asks you about places you been.

He asks you about your friends, as you're told now weren't no true friends of yours. He asks about how you got business and where you slept, how they found you and brought you in and what kind of pills they gave you. He tells you about how it would have been, if you'd done a job like that on the rules that are there instead of Vriska sending you out the back door and not handing you what he tells you should have been yours. You can't fathom how she's the one as owes you shit, and you sitting in her house and using her sopor patches and stuff, but she should have been giving you credits too? Wow.

He stops asking after a while, held up like he wants to say something but he can't force it out, and you smile a little at him, so's he knows you're not upset-well, not more'n a little bit anyway, shit's only motherfuckin' upsetting if you think on it too much. You aim to reassure, but he just looks kind of sad by it.

"…and…that's when Karkat found you?" He asks, and your smile drops off your face. That ain't a thing you want to think on, not particular, even with so much time standing between it and you. But you know he don't mean harm by it and you sort of shrug up your shoulders and nod.

"And you…you didn't realize you were pale for each other—I mean, not that time, you actually—?"

"I…yeah. We…yeah." You can still remember that hollowed-out feeling you got, forcing yourself to touch him in the ways that felt all very wrong inside; it echoes back to you at the simplest hint of remembering it. "That was some…some honestly truly most unwanted motherfucking shit right there. Felt all wrong inside, y'know?"

"I'm sorry, I guess because you had to go through that," he says, and even if you ain't actually hurting like he seems to think you are, it's truly fucking sweet to see how he looks at you, all warm and sad and sorry. "There's laws and things, but there's only so much laws can do."

You smile at him, and feel it come out all dopey and dumb and don't really care.

"Weren't a thing," you assure him, and then, riding on the sudden high of the sweet little uncertain smile he gives you, "…wouldn't have minded so much," you admit, kind of soft, kind of hoping. "…if it was you."

"You said _what?!_"

Gamzee flinches a little—you do not care. You are incandescent with pale pity and rage in almost equal measures. Well no, not very equal. Basically just rage right now, actually. You are pretty sure if you become any more frustrated with your moirail's inability to be anything approaching tactful, your frustration will manifest as diamond-cutting laser beams shooting out of your eyes.

"How is that something you thought you should _say_?!" You snap at him—"—'Oh, by the way, when I was a concupiscent hire I wouldn't have minded getting hired by you'?! Why don't you just, I don't know, take off all your clothes in front of him and hand him a bucket, that might be less embarrassing than you trying to make conversation! Sufferer's pestilential mutated fucking ichor—!"

"Sorry," he mumbles—his ears are going purple, and he's doing the hunching-down thing he does when he's secretly entertaining the ridiculous idea that you might dump him if he doesn't seem sufficiently sorry. "I didn't—he didn't look mad…"

You calm down just enough to be curious. (The pale stab in your guts when he looks that lost doesn't hurt the process.) "What the hell _did_ he say?"

"Said, uh…" Gamzee fidgets. "…went all brownish, y'know, said that was, uh…that he was glad, he guessed?"

Huh. Nitram as you knew him, sweeps ago, would have sputtered and flailed and worried and honestly fucked the situation all to hell. Maybe a couple sweeps as the emperor has done him more good than you thought.

"Okay," you allow, "—that could be worse, I guess." You frown at him. "…well that means he wasn't expecting that, didn't know you felt that way, because he's a moron. But he doesn't really…he's not against it, I guess." You consider carefully, then say, slowly, "…wait. See what his next move is. Could be worse. At least he didn't freak out."

Your name is Tavros Nitram and you're sort of freaking out.

Apparently you're attractive.

"Of course you're attractive!" Your moirail assures you brightly, and paps your cheek firmly. "That isn't the important part, Tavros. Get to the important part! The part that's making you freak out."

Apparently you're attractive to Gamzee Makara.

Aradia laughs for a full minute.

"You _only just _figured that out, didn't you?" She giggles and throws her arms around your neck fondly, nuzzling her nose ticklishly into your shoulder. "—oh my god you're so helpless sometimes, it's adorable!"

Apparently Gamzee Makara has been smiling wistfully at you every time your back is turned for almost a perigee and a half now and you haven't noticed.

"It's the worst-kept secret in the whole place," Aradia informs you. "He's hopelessly flushed for you. But the fact that he hasn't made a move means he doesn't know whether you reciprocate." She raises her eyebrows at you. "…_do_ you reciprocate?"

You flail and sputter and somehow she magically picks what you're trying to say out of your babbling and confused exclamations.

"Okay, well, if you're not sure, _try it!_" She exclaims, and as you take a theoretically soothing drink, she throws her arms around you again and gazes soulfully up at you like the flushed heroine of some romance novel. "_Touch him_," she intones, "—_like a lover._" And then, as you're choking and coughing, "—if there's an upside to dating a former concupiscent hire it's that he probably knows what he's doing. Besides." Her voice softens, losing its teasing edge. "…you seem so much happier when you're with him. You really do, Tavros."

"But…" You trail off, bewildered by that weird, amorphous fear in your guts. You try again. "…but—if he—if we—I'd have to tell him who I am, Aradia, I don't want him to…"

"Change?" She supplies gently, and sighs, smiling at you. "…can you really imagine him treating you any differently just because you have a title in front of your name?"

"...n…no." It's true, he seems to have no real conception of class boundaries. Even when he passes people who know about his former job, when they throw those dirty looks at him you know he sees, he doesn't seem to let it get him down. You're still not sure he even knows why they would dislike him.

You've still been demoting anyone who you catch looking at him like that, though. Just on principle.

"Even if he does change," she says, and she slips her warm fingers under your chin and turns your face up to hers. "…change isn't always bad. Just think about it, alright?"

She hugs you one last time, presses a chaste kiss to the top of your head and then slips away from you in a swirl of cinnamon-red skirts. She pauses in the doorway and glances back at you.

"…_like a _lover_,_" she repeats theatrically, and waggles her eyebrows at you. And then she's gone, leaving nothing behind her but the warmth of the places where she was and an echo of wickedly gleeful laughter.

What you end up doing—for a few nights anyway—is…nothing. You visit most nights after all the really important work is done. You rap, hang out—actually kind of a lot, even when you really should be getting to sleep so you aren't wiped out the next night. You bring him dinners from the banquets and he practically inhales them but doesn't mention the fact that he's still hungry even though he obviously is. He looks at you. He watches you. Now that you know it's happening, you can't stop noticing, and it's embarrassing, flattering, scary and kind of weird and exciting all at the same time.

He hangs on you, too. You didn't notice before—you just thought he was really close with everyone, but really he isn't. He keeps his distance from most people, and avoids their eyes except to give them these little hopeful half-smiles like maybe this time they'll react like halfway decent mature adults instead of bigoted six-sweep-olds who throws rocks at cold-bloods in the streets.

But you can't do anything about the talking and the looking and the hanging onto you thing, because whenever you try, you end up getting cold feet at the last second. You actually panic halfway through saying something once and accidentally invite him to 'dinner'—which is to say the upcoming banquet where he would probably be killed on principle by someone's bodyguard for showing up unannounced. Thankfully he immediately sits up and starts assuring you that you don't need to do that, you've done plenty, he's just motherfuckin' fine and he ain't ever been so happy anywhere and so on until both of you basically forget the offer ever happened.

Right now, you're leading him down a hallway to a room you found a while ago that you didn't even know was here—you have no idea, really, what they think you're going to do with all this space. Just because you're the emperor sort of doesn't mean you need to have more than fifty respiteblocks. But you found this place a few nights ago and you immediately thought it would be kind of an awesome place to hang out. There was a bunch of furniture all shoved in there together, like someone got tired of furnishing a bunch of rooms and just pushed it into the middle of one room together instead and you could hang out there for—oh, there it is.

You walk up, shove the door open, peer in at the dark inside—

The room is basically empty. There are a couple of little tables left, standing around in little clusters like really strange-looking fungi or mushrooms or something. Right in the middle, there's one big, kind of throne-ish chair.

There's nothing else.

"Oh, okay, what," you say to the world in general, and he follows you in and stops just a little closer than most people do. You can feel his breath just barely ruffling against one of your wings. "There's supposed to be a whole lot of stuff in here, like, so we could sit wherever we wanted—"

"Hey," he says, and bumps you with one shoulder. You sway a little bit—it's been so long since someone was comfortable enough to just touch you casually, you're never ready for it anymore. (It's nice, it's….really nice.) "—don't really matter, bro, as chairs go, that's one big motherfucker of a chair. Don't see as we couldn't crash down here after all, since you came all this way and it's all sorts of nasty outside…"

He sounds hopeful. Oh god. Okay. Well, there's nothing too…uh…it _is_ a big chair, and occasionally you do sit right next to each other (and on top of each other sometimes) on the floor. Sharing a chair isn't too weird, right?

Yeah. No, of course not.

You go first, like you always seem to—as comfortable as he seems to be getting with being around you, he still doesn't like to lead the way when there's someone else who can lead for him. You wonder briefly if that's a defense mechanism, if letting theother person take charge is an important thing to learn in his former line of work, and then shiver a little and try not to think about it right now. You can think about emperor things later. For now you don't want to be his emperor, you want to be his friend. And there's a big difference.

The chair is a massive, ancient thing, with so much cushion you feel for a second like it's trying to eat you, and you end up kind of slumped in it diagonally before he comes edging over and slumps down onto the other side of the chair with you, wedging himself up against the other arm of it.

His elbow touches your side; his hand grazes against your thigh as he pulls it out from between you and you jump and thankfully manage to choke down a noise like someone just…

All the examples that come to mind of what exactly would make you make that noise are not appropriate and are making it very difficult to concentrate on just platonically being sat on by him. Like you are being bros.

You sit in comfortable silence for a little while—or at least, he seems to be comfortable. You are basically sweating like a hoofbeast. His legs are thrown over yours, you can feel the muscles in his thighs tense when he leans back and shifts his weight, and it kind of feels like your head is going to explode.

You are freaking out. But you are the emperor, and emperors don't freak out, not even when their friends who might be actually pretty pitiable and sort of attractive and maybe really really like them are practically sitting in their laps. Not even when their friend kind of turns around and says—

"I gotta talk to you."

You blink at him for about thirty seconds before you get your head together and manage, _without_ too much embarrassing stutter, "…uh—uh, okay, what about—do you want to talk, I—uh. I mean. About what?"

"About," he starts, and then stops and chews his lip. "…about, uh. Stuff. About. Me…stuff? Motherfuck." He drags his hands over his face, and when he takes them away and starts again you can tell he's concentrating on every word. "…My bro said I should…wait for you to…say something," he says, very carefully. "…but I figure…waiting is dumb and it's what I…I kept tryin' that. Before. This. And him. And…" He glances at you—away again, and you see purple creeping into his cheeks. "…I kept tryin' that before," he repeats, "…and it didn't do motherfucking shit-all for me. So I guess I'll say sorry to him later."

There's a moment of silence, and you let it sit for a while before you take a deep breath and take the plunge.

"…this is about what you said the other day, isn't it?"

He winces. Yeah, you think you saw the beginning of the conversation he must have had with Karkat. You're not surprised the thought pins his ears back. "I really didn't mind," you assure him, although at the time you really kind of did, but not like you didn't like it, just…

…you're confusing yourself. You cut that train of thought off, because remembering how confused and flustered you felt isn't going to help you right now when there is obviously pretty important stuff going on.

"Why don't you just start that again?" You suggest, a little bit shakily but overall pretty solid. That's good. He's obviously not too certain about what's going on, so it's kind of your job right now. If that's not too pale of a thing to think, which you hope it isn't because that would be really completely inappropriate right now. He nods, takes a deep breath.

"I'm supposed to listen to my moirail, leave you alone until you do somethin'," he says, and he hesitates, then sits up and swivels around a little so he can look at you face to face.

The fact that this ends with him straddling your thighs is an unexpected and actually pretty pleasant bonus. It also kind of makes it hard to breathe, for reasons that have nothing to do with his weight on you and everything to do with the fact he's looking at you head-on and straight in the eyes.

"You can't wait around for me to do things," you say, a little bit more croakily than you intend to. "…Nothing will ever get done, I'm, uh…I get all…nervous."

He laughs at that, his familiar laugh with his pointed face all scrunched up and all his teeth showing. His long fingers trail a few inches down your arm and it makes you shiver for some reason when one thumb strokes the inside of your elbow. Your skin is prickling and warm.

"…well then if you're gonna get nervous," he says plainly, and you see the breath he catches to calm himself, and hey, maybe he's not actually that much braver than you. Maybe he's just better at shutting down the part of his brain that worries. "…then I guess maybe I'm gonna have to make the first move, huh…?"

You have been kissed once or twice before, with varying degrees of enjoyment. Those kisses mostly told you that the other person was uncomfortable, or terrified of you, or occasionally even that they were enjoying it and intended to keep kissing you.

This is a new one because it's about 10% pure, almost platonic affection, 40% a sort of flushed, intimate gentleness and the remaining half is urgent lust. You've never been kissed like someone like they wanted to follow it up by—well.

He seems to notice you're floundering—he pulls back a little and presses his cool cheek to yours instead, and you can feel his breath on your ear. _"We can stop_," he mumbles, but the fact that he says it right in your ear and then presses a loose, lazy kiss to your throat a second later makes it really, really hard to remember why objecting was even a thing you thought about doing. There's something about the way he kisses your skin—_slow, careful, hungry and reverent—_that's making muscles tense and twitch all over and basically turning you on more than you thought was possible. "…_I can stop…_"

"I don't…I don't want you to," you say, and find that that's the truth. Your moirail's voice keeps poking at you, in the back of your mind, _try it. Try it._ And. Well. He's sitting in your lap. And you're really tired and all the tension that was bothering you is sort of melting away every time he breathes on your neck or shifts his weight a little and yes alright you could get used to this in a hurry.

So why are you still hesitating?

Common sense tells you, _don't worry, you know what his job was, he's had far worse than you._

…worry whispers _you know what his job was, he's had far better._

"—I'm just embarrassed?" You admit, and he gives you a look like he knows there's more going on in your head than that. He doesn't push, though.

"Ain't nothin' to be embarrassed about," he says instead, and for some reason it's not the press of his body or his breath on your neck that makes you shiver this time—it's his hand on your back. Your wings are prickling, twitching in little aborted flutters with every shudder and gasp, and his fingers are tracing little circles just below the bases of them. You…aren't sure what it would feel like, how you would react, if he touched them just now.

You kind of want to find out.

"_Nothin'_ to be embarrassed about," he repeats, and he resettles himself on your lap, looking right at you. "You are a sweet-ass motherfucker."

It's not really clear to you whether he's complimenting you on personality, looks, anatomy, any/all or none of the above, but you blush horribly anyway.

"I—I don't really know—it's been –kind of a long time since—"

"_Shhh_," he mumbles, but the paleness of the sound is dampened by the way his hand traces a wandering line down the muscles of your back, too deliberate to be intended for comfort. "—_I got this."_

His hands start to slide your jacket off you inch by inch and maybe it's stupid how easily you shiver and lean into it and _let _him—

There's a sharp knock on the door.

There's no time to get him off your lap—you pull him closer instead, pressing him down, and wrap your wings around him a split second before the door opens. There won't be enough of him visible to identify—your wings are thick enough he'll be nothing but the vague form of a body, but thin enough you know it will be fully clear you're…uh…in the middle of something.

The man in the door sees your wings, the shape of someone kneeling in your lap, the look on your face and the color of your cheeks, and gapes for a split second. But you have to give him credit, he gets over it quickly, and doesn't stare or stammer. In fact, he keeps a fairly excellent straight face.

"Your majesty," he says, and oh god you feel Gamzee fill up with that strange tension—_I don't understand is not understanding going to get me in trouble?_ You squeeze him just a little tighter and he relaxes some, but not much. "The ambassador from Tarach sent word his landing will be delayed by the hurricanes on the southern coast. He begs you not to inconvenience yourself by delaying the banquet."

"Delay the banquet," you say immediately, and you try not to think about the figure curled up against your chest, how this is in every way the wrong way to tell him this, how this isn't what you wanted—"—have him redirected to the landing grounds in the Western palace and we'll only have to wait an hour or two at most. Tell him specifically that I'm delaying it by imperial decree, he'll have to show up or look ungrateful and that way he'll be out of his element. It'll be nice to get some honest answers out of Tarach. Maybe messing up their ambassador's choreography of the evening will get the truth in the open." You blink, and then smile at the messenger, a little nervously. "…uh, sorry. Did you get all that?"

The messenger grins and throws a deep bow, scattering water off his cloak—it must be raining outside, no wonder there's been so little traffic through this part of the palace—and your respect for him increases. He must have slogged here through the rain to get you a message that really could have waited until tomorrow, and now because he was willing to brave the storm you have a tactical advantage on one of the most troubling and contentious border colonies. You give him a long, hard look; he has very even, pointed teeth that make you think maybe he's actually a coldblood. If he is, he's risen up the ranks well. A coldblood who can not only get a job in a government position, but work tenaciously enough to make a position of power would be a good person to have on your side.

"…tell your superiors you're promoted," you say, and it's taken you ages practicing for Aradia to get that casual sort of commanding thing to happen with your voice, but you even manage an airy sort of hand wave. "I'll put out some kind of paperwork in the morning."

His eyebrows rise, but he doesn't argue or ask questions, just snaps off a salute. "I'll pass your message along directly!" He turns to the door, and actually dares another white-toothed grin and a wink as he ducks out. "…forgive my intrusion."

You give it five seconds and then unwrap your wings. You almost don't dare to look down at him—he doesn't raise his head from where it rested against your chest. He barely moves even to breathe.

"…Gamzee?"

"Sorry," he mumbles, and your pump biscuit squeezes tight like there's a giant hand trying to crush you out of existence. You can only make a sort of questioning sound, and he pushes himself upright and looks at you. At least, he starts to. But he won't meet your eyes.

"I'm sorry," you return convulsively, and he shakes his head quickly and _still won't look at you_. "I didn't want you to find out like this, I should have told you—"

I should've listened," he says, and he sounds feverish, almost frenzied. "—they said I shouldn't get near you, you were too good for me, they didn't say…"

…and there's your mistake, right there; that he's not conscious of what people say about him may be true, but what people say _to_ him he takes to heart, he values every opinion, he listens to his 'friends'—

"I should—I shouldn't be…" he starts to stand up—your legs are all tangled together and he scrambles clumsily to pull free, still not looking at you, mumbling apologies when he jostles you or knocks knees. "—I'll just get…"

"Please don't do this," you say, but your voice sounds bleak and small even to you. "…please don't, I hoped you wouldn't do this—"

"No, I get it now," he assures you, except you aren't assured at all, you're scared and upset and wish you'd never been crowned. "—I get it, no worries. It's been made…plenty motherfuckin' clear to me, what that job made of me." He looks bleakly pained, sobriety weighing heavy on his shoulders, and you remember all over again that he never even thought about it, that for him all he was doing was making someone feel good, helping them through drone season unscathed. He never thought there would be disgusted glares, sneers, a heavy reputation for the rest of his life.

You feel a sudden need to track down the ones who have been educating him on the subject, and not to shake them by the hand.

"I shouldn't be touchin' someone like you," he finishes quietly, and huddles a little bit where he sits. His fingertips touch the scars on his neck absently, and trace the place where the collar fed drugs into his blood. For a second the silence of his contemplation is so thick and heavy, you can't even move to breathe.

"…Gamzee—" you finally manage to choke out, and he jumps and looks up at you. He doesn't look sad anymore, not really. The pain has drained out of him, and it's left him…tired. He looks so _tired_.

"…I done and motherfuckin' ruined myself," he says softly. "Now I just gotta deal with it."

He starts to pull away, to stand up—you hold on and he stares at you, softly surprised.

"Bro," he says, like you're the one who needs someone to be gentle with them, and you understand all of a sudden why flushed feelings are supposed to come from our blood-pusher; your heart is breaking with pity and everything _aches_. "This ain't right." He pulls a little bit, and you remember how just a few minutes ago he was touching your face, talking to you so easily, easing his fingertips under the collar of your shirt. "Let go now, I'll let you up and get on with—"

A sweep and a half ago you would have let him go.

A sweep and a half ago you weren't the goddamn emperor.

You reel him down by one long arm and kiss him again and again and _again_ and he goes still and tense and then holds on to you tighter and tighter every second. Every time you pull away to breathe he keeps trying to tell you he doesn't deserve you; he's ruined, they said, a whore, they said, he doesn't belong here and everybody knows it.

"_Do you _want_ to?_" You ask, and he shudders all over and holds on so tight his grip is painful. "—do you want to belong here? With me—I mean, well, with me and Karkat of course—"

"_More than any single motherfucking thing,_" he says, and his eyes are clear and blazing for a moment before the fire drowns in uncertainty, fear, pain. "—but bro, I can't do for you what I did for them, it ain't right I should even _want—_"

"Then _don't_."

He jumps and stares at you—you do your best not to spontaneously combust from embarrassment, because you didn't even want to have an Emperor Voice but you just did it without even thinking about it and _fuck it._

"…I shouldn't get what they got, anyway," you say firmly, and draw yourself up like you actually deserve to rule. He stares at you like you're amazing, and maybe if he believes it that hard it's a little more true. "—I'm the emperor, whether I like it or not." And then his face starts to crumple back into that resigned, empty stare, and the words you were choking on force themselves out without your consent. "—you should—really you should pail me much _more_ and also much better than them because I'm in charge and I don't want to share stuff this time for once. And also stop saying bad stuff about yourself. And. You should also treat me like me and not like the emperor, but, uh, still follow those orders I just gave you because they're important and you're really pitiable sometimes and I do actually pity you. Um…a whole lot."

He stares at you, and you are treated to the entirely unfamiliar sight of his face going rich purple all over.

"By order of the emperor, go back to doing that thing with your mouth?" You try, and then yelp as he dives forward and wraps his arms so tight around you he almost lifts you out of your chair. His right hand clutches between the knobbly, chitinous plates of your wing-beds and _wow_, you kind of just basically writhe around and make helpless chirping, gasping noises at that, because _wow._

You would be more coherent with yourself about what you're feeling but really, _wow_ is all you're turning up when you try, so you run with it. He freezes when you yelp, but Aradia was right, he's more used to this than you've ever been and he starts doing it on _purpose_ instead, rubbing the tense muscles and the seam where your wings meet your back and oh _god… _

Your name is Karkat Vantas, and you are finding out more about the tendencies and preferences of the emperor of the Alternian Empire than you would ever even think of wanting to know _ever_—in fact actually you kind of want to gouge out your auricular sponge-clots with a culling fork.

"I got orders from the emperor," as Gamzee put it, and "the emperor" had _blushed, _and goddamn but the look on their faces is ridiculous and makes you stupidly happy and very, very angry at the same time_._ "I gotta go do what I do best, see you at dinner, bro." He had grinned at you, and you had been treated to the unwelcome observation that there was a purple bite mark on one of his collarbones. "—oh hey, did you know his—"

You had thrown yourself flat on the couch, cover your head with a pillow and howled in horror until they went away.

You can't do that every time, though, because you would spend a ludicrous and completely unconstructive amount of time lying on your couch and howling in horror. As much as you feel like doing that whenever Gamzee mentions his matesprit—who you are stubbornly resisting the urge to warm up to, fuck him and fuck his ridiculous genuinely humble and self-deprecating kindness—you sit dutifully through it, because hell. It makes Gamzee happy.

It's almost a perigee after you 'unofficially' threw in with the Imperials when Nitram finally gets everyone he needs together and shows up in your hivesuite looking sheepish and tired and tugging his collar open as he walks in.

Of course, because Nitram has the worst luck in the universe and the universe fucking hates you, he walks in just as you're in the middle of spilling your guts into Gamzee's cool, bony shoulder, finally worked down from your whirring tension enough to jam for real. You are so mellow it actually takes you a few seconds to realize he's even there, and then you open your eyes and there's a looming statue of brown-faced mortification standing frozen in the door with its mouth hanging open.

He ducks out, trailing apologies behind him, and you are still so helplessly blissed out and limp all you can manage to do is bang your head against Gamzee's shoulder and spit out a few slurred curses before he scritches at the back of your neck and says, encouraging and only slightly shaky with embarrassment, "…_still listenin', bro._" And you are too tired to argue.

You are still tired when you are done, but you are also much better prepared to deal with his imperial imbecility than you would have been ten minutes ago. Gamzee goes and gets him, and you see them pause in the doorway—you're still sort of dully surprised still to see Tavros pull your moirail down for a kiss, rather than the other way around, and you ruminate again on the fact that he really is different from the kid you knew. It's kind of disturbing, seeing him make decisions on the spot with something that actually approaches confidence, and especially seeing him do the thing where he slips into political mode and firmly but politely suggests ways to completely wreck his opponents' shit.

"Okay," he says, when you're all settled down, and you recognize his business voice. Oh yeah, it's such a good thing you're still floating on afterglow, this is going to be one of those talks that gives you a headache. "So everyone is all gathered up, that I need to be here, I mean. I think…it's about time we made it official, that you're part of this…whole…" he waves a hand vaguely around at the room, like he's trying to encompass the building, the palace, the fucking _empire_ in one arm movement. "…thing," he finishes vaguely.

Oh. Right.

You sit up for this. Gamzee looks kind of distant, but there's a sharpness to his eyes that makes you think maybe he's paying more attention to the political games that go past him than you like to think. You curl your fingers around his—his other hand is resting absently on his throat, one bony thumb rubbing at the spot where the needle went into him.

"The deal I made when I came here still stands, Nitram," you say warningly, as forbiddingly as you can manage—just in case he's thinking of backing out to save face. You don't think he's that kind of hypocrite, not considering how invested he is in the whole situation, but you know better than to trust a politician and for better or for worse life has shoved Nitram into that position.

"I know," he says, and his eyes flick from you to Gamzee and back. He's being very careful—probably because he's a shrewder piece of shit than you like to give him credit for, and he knows this subject makes you twitchy and angry. "…I just thought…maybe now that Gamzee is awake…we should make sure it's okay with him."

Gamzee blinks. He sits around when you're talking politics with Nitram sometimes, but only to be there, to give his basically-a-matesprit big soppy grins and distract you with indecently open pale come-ons in the middle of your talks. He's not used to being brought into them. He looks a little bit scared by the two of you watching him.

"…is what okay?" He asks, and intentionally or not he leans a little closer to you, like he wants to huddle against you. That hand on his throat presses a little harder and you see the tips of his claws leaving little purple lines in his skin. "What's up, what did I—"

"You didn't do anything," you say firmly, and at the same second Nitram says "—there's something important we need to ask you," and then you both stop and all three of you just stare at each other, waiting for someone to go first.

"…when Karkat called me," Nitram recounts eventually, and Gamzee's eyes flick to his face nervously. God, does he still think he's going to get kicked out or something? He's quadranted to two of the most powerful trolls in the universe for shit's sake. "He said he would let people know publicly that he was sort of…for the same things I'm for. But he also made a deal that…" he pauses, clears his throat. "…that when he goes out in public and tells them who he is and why he's here…you go with him. As…as his moirail."

There's a moment of silence. Gamzee gapes at both of you for a long, long second, and if you knew him less you would see nothing but blank confusion. But you see the wheels turning in his head, behind the expression—it always does take him a second to put the whole thing together, but you can almost see the moment he gets it. His eyes go wide.

"…go up…go tell a bunch of motherfuckers, as is important to _the both of you_ bein' in charge," he says slowly, and Nitram glances at you—he looks honestly almost as nervous as you feel. "…that _I'm_…"

"My moirail," you say, and again at the same moment, "—my matesprit," says Nitram, almost defiantly, and for one or the other or both you hear Gamzee's breath catch a little in his chest. There's silence for a long, long moment as he stares at the ground; you see Nitram's hands twitch, like he wants to reach out but you meet his eyes and squeeze Gamzee's hand gently, and he relaxes a little. Nice to know he trusts you to take care of your own goddamn palemate at least.

"…'s…" Gamzee finally starts hoarsely—he clears his throat, and swallows hard. "…is it…gonna get you in trouble, if I'm around, like, if I'm—if we're—"

"Actually it's better to get it out there in the open now and take it head-on than it is to hide it and, uh…well, make a scandal, basically," Tavros points out, and there's something that drags at you about that and warms you up inside, whether you want to admit it or not—it never crosses his mind that he could break up with Gamzee and save himself the trouble of a personal attachment to this whole clusterfuck. It doesn't even register with him as an option. "You can make the choice though. We're sticking with you either way. Well…" he half-shrugs. "…well, I can't really speak for Karkat I guess, but I really can't even, um…I can't imagine a universe where you two split up just because of, y'know, a couple of planetary governments. That's not the kind of universe I'd want to live in."

You can't help it—you snort at that, and then pretend he never said anything even slightly funny ever. Gamzee cracks half a grin, and the way he's looking at both of you makes your blood-pusher seize up and hurt inside you, fuck, he looks like he just found god.

"I'll do whatever you want," he says, and this time when he smiles it looks a lot more genuine. "Brother, I can't even start thinking about all the shit you two get up to, whatever you want me to do I'll just follow on. Gotta trust your friends."

"—the ones as is bein' to look out for you?" you quote back at him, a little bit acerbically, and he kind of winces and smiles at the same time.

"Yeah," he says, and he looks…sure. He looks sure. That's good to see. "Hell, I know how talk goes, if I'm not up there people are gonna say I'm, like, twenty feet tall and all wearing skulls for a hat and screwing your pans all to hell, right? That's how shit went when we talked about them that we…" he trails off, and you remember when he told you, such a long time ago, that he talked to everyone about everything, anyone who would listen, even if it wasn't true. You guess…he'd know, about rumors.

"Well—" Nitram looks like he's just had a weight lifted off his shoulders. He slumps a little bit, and rakes his fingers through his hair. "…well, good. Okay. Thank you."

"How long do we have?" You ask briskly, and he straightens up.

"Oh," he says, and coughs kind of uncomfortably. "Uh. Well, um…about that."

You get up at sunset the next night and there are people knocking politely on your door to get you dressed up to face your fate. You thank what little luck you have that the homeworld hasn't gone the way of some of the other planets in the empire and let their fashions turn ridiculous. They let you wear your favorite long coat, on the grounds that even if it's kind of beat up (no shit, you've been on the run in it for sweeps) it makes your shoulders look broader and makes you look taller. They let you keep your favorite style of black shirts, the kind with the high collars that cover as much of your skin as possible, but one of the people hovering around you rolls your sleeves halfway up your forearms while you're busy getting some of your hair trimmed out of your eyes, and before you can roll them back they throw the coat on you.

It frames your sign on your chest. Bright mutant red.

They give you two thin bracelets as well, the only jewelry you let them give you. It's in bright red, and you'd swear for a second when you grudgingly slip them on, your skin stings and twinges like it's burning. But when you look at yourself in the mirror, you don't look half fucking bad.

Nitram meets you outside the door of the place you've been staying—some sort of extra house, from what you've heard, because he doesn't like how fucking huge the imperial palace is. He's wearing his stiff jacket again, all in black with golden-brown on the collar and sleeves and his wings lying smoothly down his back like some kind of fluttering half-transparent cape. He's got the hoops in his nose and both ears again; two or three rings glinting on his square fingers. He looks grim and nervous, but ready, and there's a sort of dazed look to his eyes—you're almost sure somebody just got through shooshing him.

Speaking of shooshing, he's got Gamzee with him already when you get there. He's already dressed too—he didn't need nearly as much dressing up. He's in black and grey and white, just a jacket and pants and a black shirt. The collar just barely shows his bony collarbones—it doesn't do a thing to hide the scars on his throat, and you feel a twinge of concern as he raises a hand to them absently and traces one with a claw. His sign is worked into his jacket, and it makes you realize, suddenly, that you've never seen it before. It's a strange, looped shape. It seems right for him, somehow.

He looks nervous, but not as terrified. You pull him down by one shoulder on an impulse and kiss his head between his horns; he pulls himself back up and butts your foreheads together and some of the vague fear goes out of his eyes.

The palace is a rush of activity. Someone tries to put makeup on you and you casually elbow them in the face and tousle your hair when somebody tries to comb it down. There are no good pictures of the Sufferer, but you've seen his face as the artist's draw it, from descriptions passed down by generations or myths and rumors. If you're going out there as his descendent it's sure as fuck not going to be with your hair combed down and your face covered in girly sludge.

You know the door when you come to it. The palace is pretty dim, but there's light on the other side of this door, and the sound of a whole _shitload_ of voices talking.

You hold Gamzee's hand. He glances down at you and nods, just once.

Nitram opens the doors.

The crowd is fucking enormous. You stare out over faces and shirts and clothes embellished with yellows and oranges and greens, a few rust-bloods, a lot of browns. They're mostly looking at Nitram, as he strides forward—_strides_, when did he learn to do that—but you can see the eyes flickering to you, and the way people lean towards each other and murmur things with the barest hints of whispers, barely moving their lips. You glance over as someone clears their throat; it's the man from the palace, the one with the lightning-bolt horns. The fins he usually keeps pinned and taped and painted out of existence against his cheeks are spread and fluttering. The bandages you always see just visible under the edge of his collar are gone.

"We are graced by the presence of the sovereign of the glorious Alternian empire!" He announces, and you hear the slightest edge of a stutter and slur to his voice—you're listening for it, and he's almost trained it out of existence.

You think about the steps you took to stay unnoticed, unobtrusive, of the way he grimaces in pain sometimes and the bruising on his earfins when you finally got him to show you them—about how far and fast you had to run when someone found you, your landlord slaving away on broken engines and bent thermal hulls with rooms full of genius robotics made out of scraps, your moirail, so brokenly grateful just to have food and a place to sleep. Hell, even the bitch who sold him, taking every filthy job she could get her hands on.

Yeah. Basically fuck this whole shitheap society. You're doing this. You're going to make this fucking happen.

"With that in mind," Nitram is saying, although you really have fucking clue what you should be keeping in mind—some political bullshit, probably. "…I'd like to formally announce the imperial alliance with the Sufferer's blood heir."

You take a half-step forward. All their eyes are on you, curious, searching, waiting for you to make the first move. Your ears feel hot. Your thorax is all seized up. Nitram, of course, chooses now to be all bizarrely calm and weird and not look nervous at all—although you can see the little twitches his wings are doing, hidden from the audience, and you're pretty sure he's at least as tense as you are. "Karkat Vantas. And…his moirail. Gamzee Makara."

You can almost _feel_ the eyes on you harden and the interested looks freeze solid. Gamzee's hand squeezes yours so tight your bones creak. He doesn't try to smile or wave, like he normally does; the only movement to him is the forced, slow, even sound of his breath and the slight convulsive trembling that runs through him in waves. Whispers are running through the crowd. He's tall, ill-favored—he's got _purple_ sown into the neutral black and white and grey of his clothes. You know the rumors have been spreading for almost a perigee. You know they know who he is, or at least they can guess, and their guesses might even be worse than the truth. You almost know what they're seeing, even though you can't pick words out of the hissing mumble of the crowd. _How dare he, what's wrong with them—_

"Is that a _purpleblood_?" Someone says, just loud enough to hear, and you feel Gamzee's hand twitch ever-so-slightly in yours.

"Mr…mm…Vantas," says another anonymous voice, and it puts your hackles up just by the tone, the stupid stuck-up tone like its owner just had to pick up something disgusting. "…we have reason to believe your…friend—who is supposed to be given free access to both you and his highness—was involved in a profession that was less than—"

"Oh," says Tavros, sudden and quiet, and the crowd stills immediately. There's something very dangerous about how sudden and soft his voice is. "…are we talking about his former and _perfectly legal_ profession?"

"…yes," says the faceless voice of the shifting, murmuring crowd, and it sounds cautious now, but still not cautious enough. They have the support of the crowd. Nobody knows who they are so they can say what they want to and then get all puffed up because they think they're fucking _brave_ and your moirail is just barely trembling next to you, close enough you can hear his breath rasp and shake in his chest. "Your majesty, with respect," (_with no fucking respect, fuck you_) "—you have turned down hundreds of qualified candidates to work in the palace, including quadrant-mates of the few you have accepted. And now you are allowing not only a purple-blood, but a common _street-walking_—"

"Here's an idea!" You say, and you don't have a microphone but hell, you have a squawk-blister that will do twice the job. The asshole in the crowd shuts up to listen, and you step up next to Nitram. From this angle you can see his face is perfectly calm and maybe a little sad.

His hands are grey-knuckled clenched fists, shaking behind his back.

"Here's an idea," you repeat, a little quieter but not much. "—how about if you have an issue you stop hiding like a fucking coward and come out here and tell me you think _saving lives _is a bad thing, it's either that or keep cowering back there like a wiggler who's scared of their lusus! Just keep shoving your ugly slimy hooves in your mouth, douchebag, I want to see if you can go so far down pointless-oozing-pus-sack road you shit them back out again!"

The crowd goes quiet. You can't tell whether they're silent out of fascination, confusion, affront, sudden respect, maybe all of the above, but you're not going to waste the silence. You step forward some more, put distance between yourself and the other two who are with you, and look for the faces that are still glaring at you. You glower right back at them. "I'm not even bringing Nitram into this," you say, and he makes a tiny noise behind you—you don't have time to worry about what it's intended to tell you, though. You're on fire, you are _so fucking furious_. "—you have a problem with my _moirail_," you snarl, and fuck yes you are challenging them, "—you have a problem with _me._ Stand up like someone who isn't a hornless quivering heap of runny hoof-beast shit and _YOU FUCKING TELL ME, FACE TO FACE _that when our ancestors fought to free your sorry asses from the hemospectrum they wanted you to put it right back where it was you massive_ festering BIGOTED _FUCKWAD!"

There's no uproar, but there's the direct equivalent which is everyone gasps and then sort of huddles together and starts murmuring and staring. You feel…better. Actually yeah, that made you feel a lot better.

Alright. They wanted you because you were a mutant, because you're the unlucky fuck with the nubby horns and the candy red blood. They wanted you to be the Sufferer.

Fucking—_FINE._

"I'll give a job under my _personal fucking care_ to anyone who can tell me who said this," you declare, and now they're _really_ confused, _excellent_. You like them better confused, not sure of themselves and thinking they know better than everyone else, all secure in their chromist _bullshit._ "Tell me who said, '—where I stand, I don't see a spectrum, I see a _circle_.' Who said 'tell me you would know apart our children without the colors we paint on them'! Who fucking _said _'if you climb over someone you better reach back down and _pull them the hell up after you_!'?! Come on. Who said that?"

There's dead silence. If anybody knows, they aren't raising their hands, but you don't see a hint of comprehension in even a single face. In your peripheral vision, you see Tavros sort of start to raise his hand. You flip him off. He lowers it again.

They're looking at you. They're holding their breath. They're listening.

"Okay," you say, and you manage a tone sort of almost calm and even. "…we'll try something easier. Tell me who said 'there is a _cancer_, and it is the power of the empire and all it stands for—'" you don't even finish the quote and hands are rising in the crowd, forming your ancestor's symbol, voices are snarling _Sufferer, Sufferer._ Oh, you are going to puke BILIOUS ESSENCE OF PURE FUCKING HEINOUS RAGE ON THEM GODFUCKINGDAMMIT— "—SHUT UP!"

They do. They don't look discouraged. They look expectant. Oh, they are in the _shit_ now.

"Whose message brought this empire down?!" You call out, and they glance at each other, baring their fangs, tensing up, grinning, and yell it back . _Sufferer! Sufferer! _"Whose rage is this weighing on my shoulders like the ton of bleeding bodies we left _rotting_ after the rebellions?!" And they _howl _for you, this is what they came for—a bloody sermon, a _show_. "WHO DIED SCREAMING STILL WAITING FOR FUCKING _FREEDOM_?!"

They scream themselves hoarse. You can see the cameras, this is going all over the empire, and you give it a long, deafening ten seconds before you hold up a hand. They go silent immediately, staring at you like they want to rip you open and pull secrets out of your bones, and you feel sick and _incandescently _furious and you feel like you're standing on the edge of a cliff, swaying.

Oh well. You have friends that fly.

"…Tell me who said," you say, so quietly, and they lean forwards, holding their breath. "…_I don't see a spectrum. I see a circle._"

Silence. One or two people start to yell something, but it dies away into a confused silence. They're staring at you; faces slack, all that bloodlust and frenzy and it just slammed into that thought like a fucking tidal wave hitting a mountain.

And right into the silence, you hear a voice.

"…_the Sufferer_," says Gamzee, so quietly you can barely hear him. His voice sounds strange, all thick and choked, and you turn back to him and see his face is pale and he looks like he's barely standing, but he's looking right at you like your every word is the most important thing in the universe.

"Say it again," you say, and if your voice comes out kind of hoarse and soft and there's a whole crowd of bigoted assholes watching well fuck them, let them watch.

"The Sufferer," he repeats, and you remember the way he read the books you gave him, gaping, every little fact another miracle. "It's in that book, the red one you gave me, the book—"

"The Book of the Iron Infidel," you finish for him, and you turn back to the crowd and smile at them with all your teeth. "…funny how nobody talks about those sermons, isn't it? _Fucking. Hilarious. _How nobody remembers anything but the cuffs. The execution. The fucking SCREAM!" People jump and wince—your throat is raw but you don't care, your voice echoes like what you're saying means something and your moirail is standing next to you. "You all fall down drooling at the mention of his name but _nobody_ cares what he preached his entire miserable _life_! _If you climb over someone, you better reach down and help them up after you._

"So yeah, my moirail's blood is purple. Our emperor's blood is brown. My _disgusting_ fucking blood is some heinous shade of red! There's a guy who works directly for me, best clerk or bodyguard I'd ever ask for, who has had to hide his _fins_ for _seven fucking sweeps_ after some gang of bulge-sniffing shit-heaps held him down—a _five-sweep-old!—_and tried to chop them off! You think we're better than him? We overthrew the entire fucking _empire_ because they did shit like that to us and now the only difference between some of us and her Imperious Condescension herself is how _warm_ your fucking _blood_ is?! DON'T YOU DARE FUCKING WALK OUT, YOU PESTILENT BULGE-FUCKED INFLAMED MUSCLEBEAST'S WASTE-CHUTE! YOUR ENTIRE MISERABLE COLONY HAS MORE HATE-CRIMES THAN THE OTHER THREE PLANETS IN YOUR QUARTER COMBINED, YOU _SIT DOWN _AND GET _FUCKING SCHOOL-FED!_"

Someone starts to shout something—you point at the source of the sound and make a noise that is so angry you don't even have words to express it anymore—she keeps trying to talk but you just basically _SKREEE_ at the top of your lungs until she shuts up, and nobody tries to raise their voice again after that.

"You wanted me to be my ancestor," you announce to the crowd, and crack your knuckles. "_Okay._ Let's go _all the way back._ Sit your asses down and shut your flapping maws. _I'm going to recite you some motherfucking sermons_." You've been reading his sermons since you were small, you've been hating him and respecting him in equal measures, and the words are burned into your pan like the red-hot shackles.

"The First Sermon," you declare to the silent universe. "Chapter one. Verse one_._"

Your name is Gamzee Makara and politics are scary shit. Your palemate yelled from the moonrise to moonset at all the people from all the planets. All of them. Motherfucking _all _of them. He took questions and fired them back like he was winning wars with every single fucking word.

He came back away and the second he was out of their eyes he just dropped to his knees and shook like to break in pieces. You had to pick him up and carry him back, and he didn't talk for days.

Now things are different. Not all good. Someone tried to kill you the other day and the only reason he didn't make good on that wicked intention was that you'd gone and had a nightmare that jerked you back to yourself a second before he could. You had to hit him hard on the back of the head and then spent the rest of the hour before Karkat showed up curled up in the corner breathing hard into your knees and not thinking about how good it felt to lay into him after the shit he shouted at you when you were fighting.

It's almost worse when you go outside—people call at you, someone screams from the wall, wants to know if you're fucking your moirail, if 'someone like you' even knows how to be pale for someone without a bucket involved. A couple more want to know okay then, the emperor?! And you ignore them just as much because _those_ times ain't in no way their business.

…besides, with you he ain't the emperor, he's Tavros, and how fucking gorgeous he is or ain't with his clothes off is not their business either. Suck on _that_, motherfuckers.

Another perigee passes from "_**The Second Coming**__", _and you get able to go out without being yelled at, even stand up on the walls and look out at the city some without too much notice or care. You think there are eyes on you all the time anyway, judging what you are, what you want—it's too much worry and bother to think about, so you just act yourself and let them get all acquainted with you as you are.

Your brother most motherfucking pale goes out and screams at people, and comes back worked up and tired and hoarse—you curl up around him and both of you keep each other floating. Your matesprit looks like he don't sleep nearly half as much as he should, but he still comes back to see you and he murmurs into your ear about numbers, laws, about people whose pushers are nearly as cold as yours and colder reaching up and looking for stars to fit in their hands.

You keep reading the book of sermons Karkat seems to have all carved deep into his pusher, and he keeps spreading them. And Tavros keeps taking that whipped-up taken-apart world Karkat makes and pushing it together again, healing it into better, kinder shapes. It's pretty hard to be sure because honest to fuck you are pretty dumb, but you think, maybe…maybe there's a good thing got its start on here.

You'll have to wait and see.

"When you have a heart too heavy to carry, the only way to survive is to find someone strong enough to carry it for you."

~Troll James Dean, probably

"_My arms around his neck,_

_My fingers laced a crown._

_I was a heavy heart to carry..."_

~"_Heavy In Your Arms_", Florence and the Machine_  
_

* * *

**I was planning, when I wrote it, to leave the first chapter of this (its own fic on AO3, in fact) to stand alone. But then someone in the comments was like "...can we have some Gamtav in this verse? Please?" and I was like "oh okay I can write a short little thing."**

**WRONG.**

**INSTEAD MAKEOUTS AND SERMONS AND DRAMA HERE WE GO KIDS WE'RE DOING IT WE'RE CLIMBING THIS WHOLE MOUNTAIN.**


	3. Over the Waterfall

**Length**:11,417 words

**Characters/Pairings**: Pale Eridan/Feferi, Pale Gamzee/Karkat, mentions of Gamzee/Tavros, and pitch Eridan/Sollux

**Warnings**: This chapter has rape and violence in it-nonsexual rape, but forced intimacy nevertheless. If you would like to skip over it, when you reach the line "You lash out and claw wildly..." you can press ctrl+f and skip to "When you wake up it's dim and warm". That should get you over that scene in particular. U_U Also victim-blaming and shit like that.

**Notes**: Remember how I said in the last chapter that that was the point where this story started to spiral wildly out of control? Well this is the story where it gets worse. U/U

* * *

Your name is Eridan Ampora and you're worth ten times what anyone will ever credit you for.

You are basically the second shittiest hemo-caste you can possibly be, and as such you get through every shitty day by being as much of a sarcastic douche to people as you can get away with, forming detailed political theories, hoarding every penny you can make and using your own tendency to think of yourself as a tragic martyr to your advantage. You can't feel like a martyr properly when you're lyin' around at home, after all. You have to be at work, doin' important things even though you're starvin' and tired and never at the right temperature, or else you can't do it right. So you work the shittiest shifts and the worst jobs around the palace, because they pay like hell, and occasionally you even get to run messages to the emperor or get a hand into politics.

And because you do the shittiest jobs, you know the dirtiest secrets. (You know that spymaster Captor and The Second Sufferer are wigglerhood friends and they fight all the time and you know the Second Sufferer sometimes cries at night and especially when he's with his moirail, which you kind of wish you didn't know. It makes your stomach hurt. You know the romantic drama for the entire palace guard and you've even ended up in ashen flings with a few of them.)

(…you know about the emperor and Makara holding hands and whispering to each other and holding on to each other tight in dark corners, and that's your most dangerous secret right there, makes you nervous even thinking about it.)

And now you're recently reassigned and in the highest spot you've ever had, which is standin' in front of a respite block door and glarin' at the hallway.

The emperor's coldblood, Makara, has taken to following Vantas to his sermons, or watching them on screen when he can't, and writing down every word with painstaking care. He posts them online—_the red blog of the iron infidel,_ Captor jokes every single time he has a chance—and the assassination attempts have increased again.

Which leaves you, in the middle of the day, standing outside his room with the fingers of one hand tapping lazily on the hilt of your gun.

This spree is going to pay well, at least. There were openings before and after the shift you usually guard, and sure you've been up for almost 48 hours, sure you went three rounds with one of Zahhak's robots today and you feel like pulp, sure you haven't eaten and your hands are kind of shaking, but the pay is going to be so worth it. You're gonna have rent money, _and_ money to re-dye the purple that's starting to grow into your roots, and maybe even a really thick coat to get Fef through the winter.

You allow yourself a brief moment of self-congratulation, and then go back to considering the fuckin' ridiculous prices for food and medicine and worryin' over the scratch on one of Fef's fins that you think might be getting infected. You're definitely not fallin' asleep on your feet, but you're still not exactly solid right now, which is probably why you jump a little when you hear a noise from down the hall and aim your gun at the shadowy figure's face.

"State name'n business," you snap—uh, huh, that came out a little slurred. Wow.

The figure stops and raises its hands cautiously, which is a big point in its favor right there. You don't lower your gun though, because that's been something they've tried before. "Imperial guard, unit six, Arkent Winnow," says a dry voice. "…Rust, thirteen goddamn sweeps and two nights and I know for a fact you haven't been home since I turned thirteen, Ampora."

Oh.

You sag a little and captchalogue your gun again as your relief comes out of the shadows, all scrawny muscle and sharp-crooked horns. Ark is basically the task-troll for the whole palace, regardless of rank or actual age in sweeps—thirteen sweeps ain't all that impressive, but it's been all streets and fighting all the way back and Ark's a rusty anyway. You'll be alive long after the guard falls to somebody else.

For now though, Arkent Winnow is in charge and you step aside, glancing back into the room on instinct; Makara is still sprawled on his couch in a big mess of lanky limbs and big horns and knobbly joints.

"Ark, you gotta not come outta the dark like that," you say plaintively, and Ark grunts and whaps you on the shoulder. "I coulda blown your head off."

"You 'coulda' done no such thing." You're elbowed out of the way—geez, sharp elbows. The sharpest. "You're half asleep, Ampora."

"Vile slander," you protest, and then flush because wow, that was about the most seadweller thing you've said in a long time. "Wile slandah", haha. Shit maybe you are as tired as all that. Ark smacks you again—you wince and realize you were sort of listing to one side, staring into space and grinning absently.

"Take that shit off your fins and get out of here, Ampora. You're dead on your feet."

You salute as sharply as you can, and gladly follow orders.

The cold twilight air is like a refreshing smack in the face when you walk out of the palace in your dingy coat—your fins twitch and catch at the breeze and it's fuckin' glorious. You're still exhausted, but walking home doesn't seem like quite the impossible trial it was when you were tryin' to struggle out of your uniform and into street clothes. The streets are all empty—no wonder, the sun hasn't even set yet. It's still light.

You take a deep breath, shake out your fins, scrub your hands over your bleary eyes and start walking.

It's a beautiful evening, really. Your head clears out, and you fall into a rhythm like you do when you're on border patrol; proceeding along, nice and even and not putting too much effort into any step and Fef is gonna be up when you get back, she can yell at you for staying up too late and it'll be fucking _wonderful._ You have just enough extra money to maybe buy a half-caegar piece a real, juicy fish, surprise her with it…

You're lost in thought and just into the ring of smaller houses—middle class, the ones who are far enough above you to lord it over you but low enough to need to prove it—when someone shouts out behind you.

"Hey!"

Shit.

Your good mood evaporated into tension and nerves so fast it makes your stomach heave. You keep your head down and speed up but you can't run, a running seadweller is basically asking to get brought down and arrested on the spot, and anyway running just encourages them. You're only three blocks from the palace. You could turn back…duck in at the gate and wait for them to go away…

…But Fef is waitin' for you, and you imagine the security camers swiveling around to see you, Captor's voice crackling out of the speakers, _Hey, you forget something?_ And you grit your teeth and keep walking.

"Hey!" The person who yelled at you has caught up while you were planning your next move; he ducks right in front of you and you back up a few steps automatically, baring your teeth, taking in every inch of him in the split-second he stands there grinning at you, blocking your path. He's got muscles, like he works to make them look that way not like he uses 'em. Pretty skinny. Short, flattish horns, uneven teeth. You can take him. "Hey, fins, not often we get your kind of trash around here, huh? Come on, give us a show!" He puts his hands up to his cheeks, spreads his fingers out like fins and it takes everything you've got not to punch him. _Always tape up no matter how tired you are always hide your fins no matter how much it hurts._

And then there are more footsteps behind you and fuck, _fuck_, he's got friends, too—a teal and something a little higher, turquoise maybe. Hanging around with the midbloods to shake off the cerulean in his eyes. He's big, bigger than you—can't be much older, but warmbloods grow so much faster and you've been starvin' most of your life.

"Get out of my way," you say, very quiet, very controlled, and pin your fins as flat as they'll go, just to get the message across nice and clear. "Now."

They laugh. One of them shoves at you—you back up, and shit you're in one of the tiny alleys off the main road, you're out of sight and that's the worst way to be. Every inch of you is prickling , instincts screaming in your ear like sirens. The teal is pacing to one side of you with her mouth fixed in a nasty grin—she's missing teeth, looks a deal and a half tougher than the one who yelled after you. The big turquoise is going to the other side, circling you like a scavenger-beast.

"Come on," repeats the ringleader—his eyes are golden-yellow, almost chocolate brown, but when he reaches for you they spark white for a second—psionics. Fuck.. "Come on, show off a little, _highblood_!"

"I said, _get out of my way_!" you snap, and then swallow your pride, lower yourself enough to add a bitter, "…please." On the end. "I just want to get home, alright?"

"You roll over pretty nice, for a coldblood," gloats the yellow, and _that_ is definitely your personal space and he is definitely intruding on it. "You sure these are real?"

He reaches for your _fins_ and before you even bother to think you snap your fangs at his hand and jerk away, growling. They all hoot and jeer and close in, and your hands start to rise before you can think about it—you've got a fistkind abstratus, most coldbloods do these days just because weapons are too dangerous, too conspicuous, but you're so much better with your rifle, but the rifle's not made for usin' this close and you could _kill_ one of 'em and then you would have to kill 'em all and you've done it before but you don't want to go down that road again.

"There's someone waitin' for me at home and I need to get back," you repeat, and missing your rifle you find yourself squaring up, lowering your horns, baring your teeth. Their smiles fall a little—fuck yeah, just because you're a coldblood doesn't mean you can't show a pretty mean snarl when you need to. "I doubt you'd get that—but I guess if you've got a filled quadrant I just filled another one because _wow_, instant pity for that poor sucker."

"Customers don't count as quadrants," sneers the yellow, condescending like he's schoolfeeding a dumb wiggler, and hahaha, he's not smiling anymore. Douche. Bet his quadrants _are_ empty. "Don't know who'd pay to pail that, but—"

"Wow, way to think with your bulge," you snarl at him, sarcastic and sharp, "—because all of us have to sell ourselves to stay on top, right? Who even said I filled a concupiscent quadrant, moron!"

"Yeah?" Teal this time—she sniggers and you hate that her curved horns remind you of Fef's. She's spits and slurs—her pupils are huge and drugged-looking. "Oh, sho theshe are for your moirail'sh ushe only, right? Why sho defenshive, cold shtuff?"

"—bet if you touch it he'll start purring!" The yellow-blood is laughing, and the teal reaches for your fins again and the adrenaline hotwiring your spine catches fire as her fingertips catch and drag down the seam where your left fin meets your face _YOU COULD TEAR HER WRIST OPEN BLEED HER OUT— _

You lash out and claw wildly, barely pulling it enough to avoid her eyes and, and your nails catch and drag and then there's teal blood on your hands. Someone hits you hard and you stagger and spit a tooth, but that'll grow back—

The big turquoise hauls your arms up behind your back so hard you swear you feel one of them almost pop out of its socket. You thrash, snapping, but you're at the wrong angle and struggling_ hurts_, your arms are at the breaking point. You're trembling again, rage and terror and disgust and you snarl at them wordlessly, you're going to _kill_—

"Wow," says yellow, "—_calm down._"

And he _paps your face_.

You are breathless with outrage, and half of your pan wants to go _berserk_ but the other half it is just this quiet, surprised, _oh_, _his hands are warm_. And for a second your trembling stops.

Then he pulls his hand away and pats you again, too hard, half a slap—your glasses are crooked on your nose and your cheek and your pride sting and they're _laughing._ You hate them and you hate yourself for jerking after his hand like you're trying to follow it, trying to keep him touching you when really all you want to do is tear his throat out with your teeth. Someone's hand presses back to your fin, holding on hard enough you don't dare to jerk away but just gentle enough that it makes you cringe, how good it feels when he runs a calloused thumb across the tines. The fear and disgust knot up with the pleasure and contentment and boil sickeningly in your guts.

They're talking, but you haven't been listening. You tune back in, struggle to think straight through the fog he's piling into your mind, the hazy good feelings, _shhh, stop thinking, you'll be just fine._

"—rile him up," someone is saying and then the hand holding on to you clenches hard and tight and sudden and something _rips_ and there's blood running down your face and you're _screaming_.

They press you down onto the ground and with one hand he's clawing _tearing twisting_ your fins and all you can do is sob and thrash and scream and someone bends over you and paps your face again, shooshes in your ear—you think you're going to throw up. You _are_ throwin' up, gagging and choking and you try to lash out but someone grabs you by the horn and _squeezes_ and all you can do is keen in sudden terror as your whole body goes vulnerable and limp.

"_Shoosh_," they hiss, and you want comfort, _need_ comfort but not from them not like this with blood on your face and in your mouth and eyes, with them hurting you as they pretend to calm you and your body doesn't know whether to sob or purr or scream and you can't do any of them anyway and it's not good not _right_ _don't want—_

They calm you to a quivering, sobbing mess and then grab your other fin and _wrench_ and the noise you hear come out of you is terrible and shaky, this high, long helpless wail and you wanna black out, be done with this, not have this horrible, helpless calm forced on you anymore—

"Hey!"

Their hands leave your face but someone's still holding onto your horn—you lie there still and don't move. Your whole body is filling up with this weird stillness—you can't move, every inch of you is still there, still burning with pain but you can't even seem to remember how moving worked before. Everything is a blur. Everything hurts.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing back there? Get off him!" says the voice, and your fins are all torn and you're shivering—you've got things hangin' off your fins and they flick to get them off and you realize all that's hangin' off them is _themselves_ and you shudder all over and try to scream from it, from the fear and the horror of it, from the _agony_.

It comes out a cracked little whine, and no more.

They ain't lettin' go of you. Someone draws a weapon, close enough you can smell the ozone through the smells of blood and bile and filth and sweat—the voice that stopped them is closer now, walking nearer you. "Get off him, _now," _they growl, "—if you don't take that hand off his horn I'm going to tear it off your wrist, I swear."

The hand leaves. You're still frozen, limp, but you can breathe again, the horrible helpless fear isn't weighing down on you like an iron weight. You hear yellow stand up, see him pull a wad of cash and then vanish out of your view, a blur. "I'm his palemate, sir," he says, and you want to scream, struggle, _deny it_, but you're still and silent. "-you wouldn't interrupt me in taking care of my moirail, would you? He's just a little upset right now, that's all." When have the police ever turned down a bribe, just to help a seadweller? He's going to leave, he's going to leave you to them and it's all going to start again and you could _die_ here.

_You're going to die here._

"_Bullshit._" There's a crack, a yelp—yellow's money flutters down to the ground and the others around you are suddenly getting up, tense. "I'm giving you shitstains _one chance_ to put your weapons down and get your hands on the wall, got it? I'm taking you in for rape and I would be _just fine_ adding 'resisting arrest' to the list. For fuck's sake, I've _got_ his palemate _right here!_"

Shit. _Shit._

You can still barely move but you thrash and twist and manage to pitch over on your side—all you can see of the mouth of the alley is a brief flash of a tall, dark figure in some kind of coat with a hood. The three who had you before are standing between you and him, weapons out. You can't see her there but you can barely see at all and then you pitch forward and your face is pressed into the ground; it smells of blood and bile and acid. _"Fef—nnh…no, wh…_"

_Crack_, and yelling, and people running—sparks and fire, but it doesn't matter because a pair of hands lifts you up so gently and her hands are so cold, so wonderful and cold.

"_Eridan_," Fef gasps over you, and it makes you shudder that she touches your face, but you go still and let her. She needs this as much as you do, she needs this. It's not calming you down, but she needs to feel like she's got something she can do, right?

Your fins start to fold up and you turn your face into her hand and let yourself whimper like a wiggler as the pain washes over you.

When you open your eyes again the dark figure is standing over her shoulder, and this close with Fef liftin' your head for you and their hands off you, your brain manages to fit together what it should have known the instant you heard the voice from the mouth of the alley.

"…_Captor_," you croak, and he looks down at you. Not gloating, like you always imagined he would be if he caught you weak. Not smiling or mocking. Blank. So very, very grim. "_hhh—wh…_"

"Your moirail showed up right at the palace looking for you," he says, and his eyes flick to Fef, but she's not listening to him. "…you're lucky she was brave enough to cross town, even _luckier_ I was watching the front gate right then, Ampora. I was about to sign out for the night. Miss Peixes—"

But you're not listening, because Fef just trailed her hand across your cheek, feeling you out in the darkness like a blind woman, and her fingers just touched the snapped tines and shredded flesh of your fin. You make a horrible, wailing, keening sound and your whole body thrashes fitfully out of your control; she gasps and pulls her hands away. She starts to shift you off her lap and you twitch, tryin' to reach up and cling to her, but she doesn't let you go entirely; she lays you in a patch of filtered sunset light and you feel the warmth on your ruined fins and know the tiny noise of horror she makes is because she sees the damage in its entirety.

She raises her head with a horrible noise, half a sob, half a snarl, and she starts to get to her feet.

"_I'm going to kill them,_" she growls, and a jolt of panic lances up your spine and hotwires your arm. You buck up off the ground, grab for her and catch one thin, strong-as-steel arm with weak fingers. She could tug out of your grip without even pulling, but she stops, staring down at you. "—Eridan—"

"_C'n…l'you do that," _you gasp, and tug weakly on her arm. "You're…better'n…that…Fef. Don't…" and it comes out horrible and tiny and weak because you're _scared_, goddammit, you feel like you're dying and it'd be welcome. "…_don't leave me…"_

She makes a tiny sobbing sound and collapses back down to her knees. She strokes your hair—you flinch as she goes near your horns and she avoids them after that, scruffing at the nape of your neck and stroking your cheekbones and forehead over and over again. Captor is still looking down at you, and you should be embarrassed, but he's just staring, like he's seen something horrible, something that makes him sick.

It takes you a long second to realize he's lookin' at you.

"Holy shit," he says, like he doesn't realize he's saying it, distant. His eyes are sparking, his horns have little arcs of lightning between them. He's grinding his teeth around the words. "…they're going to pay. _They're going to pay for this._"

He comes up next to Fef, leaning over your head; bends down so you can see his face. Everything is blurry and too bright, like your eyes can't adjust, everything hurts.

"We're taking you back to the palace," he says, and his voice is liquid. "…you want me to put you under, ED?"

_ED._ Stupid tightass yellowblood and his stupid duality kink.

You close your eyes and nod, and the last thing you hear is the soft _click_ of his fingers, the last thing you feel is your moirail's hand on your hair.

* * *

When you wake up it's dim and warm, and your blanket feels unbelievably soft and nice. You roll over on blurry instinct, searching for the glowing digits of your alarm clock—no. No wait, what do the warmbloods call it, you swore you were gonna clean up how you talked, draw less attention, but their name for it is so fuckin' _long_ and your head is poundin' and fuzzy.

You spend almost five minutes trying to sort out the warmblood word for alarm clock before you realize yours isn't there. It's _not there_ and you feel rested which means you slept for too long and you can't afford to lose the pay for the time you missed this is going to mess up your perfect record and _what if they kick you out Fef has that eye infection that needs medicine and the cold season is coming and you haven't bought warm clothes for her yet and they're going to dock your pay—_

A pair of hot hands grab you by the shoulders and pushes you back down as you struggle with limbs that feel made out of lead. "Whoa!" Someone is saying, "Whoa hey, you're not getting up yet. Back in bed."

You blink and stare—everything is blurry without your glasses, but the fog of grey and red and blue above you leans down and comes into something like focus—Captor blinks down at you, frowning. He pushes you a little; you topple back over, weak as a newly hatched cluckbeast, sprawling on the bed. You barely managed to lift yourself up off the bed a few inches and you're panting like you just sprinted the length of the palace.

"You're on sick pay," says Captor, and oh. You said all that out loud, _great._ "And we've got better medicine for her here than you'd ever be able to afford no matter how much you overworked yourself, so lie down and _shut up_."

A cool hand presses to your too-hot forehead and you loll your head to one side and see a face that is a lot more familiar.

"_Fef_," you croak, and she presses her cold little hands all over your burning face—god that feels so good. She avoids your fins and your horns and you are horribly grateful for that for reasons you aren't ready to remember just yet. Your fins are dull and heavy and you can't seem to find them or move them, like they're just…

…_gone._

_What if your fins are gone._

You lurch upright again instantly, this time lookin' for a mirror, and Fef's hands and Captor's powers instantly push you back down again—you thrash a little, but when the first jolt of terror wears off there's nothing to replace it, no energy in you anywhere.

"Fucking hell, _stay down,_ you workaholic asshole," says Captor, and any other time that would piss you off—_oh that's rich, comin' from the guy who has more money than he'll every know what to do with and _still_ works exactly an hour later than you just to be spiteful—_but you still can't feel your fins and you are too busy freakin' the fuck out. "What's even the matter this time?!"

"Fins—!" You rasp, hoarse and breathless—it comes out a squeaky croak, your throat is killin' you. "—_my—fins—_?!"

"They're just numb!" Fef takes one of your hands. You didn't realize you were trembling. "Shhh, _shhh._ You're just fine, you're safe." She smiles, and it's a little too bright, like her eyes. Like she's trying not to cry. "…you'll…you'll be able to get those fin piercings you always wanted now, heh…"

Heh. Yeah. (_oh god oh god what did they do what have they done all in tatters_) You always wanted some hoops (_it hurt oh god it hurt so bad gonna throw up oh _fuck_) _you could never afford a sterile piercing or the gold hoops you always wanted (_fins horns face get them off why were they touching how dare they it hurts help it hurts_) but yeah, even with cheap iron ones that should look pretty badass.

"…neat." you say blankly, and then burst into tears.

By the time Fef gets you calmed down outta your hysterics (Captor at least had the basic decency to leave for that part, the heinous asshole) you feel like you been run over by something huge and heavy and your fins are startin' to throb and ache under their bandages. It's like bein' a wrung-out sponge. Fef kisses your forehead and lays you back down, all gently like she thinks you'll break—presses a button and the next thing there's somethin' heavy and warm takin' up residence in your skull and your fins ain't even a concern anymore.

You sleep.

A few hours later you're awake again, shaking all over, and Fef is gone.

The room is silent. You can't remember what you were dreaming about—it's all a blur of anticipation and fear and it takes all your energy to haul yourself onto your side a little and clutch at your stomach. At least if you puke now it'll be all over the bed instead of all over yourself, and you're not gonna choke to death on your own bile. That would be the most fuckin' ignominious thing.

You don't know how long you lie there for, breathin' deep and shakin' and tryin' not to throw up or cry or breathe too hard, but after a long, long time when your heart has almost settled down and your breathing is evened out, the door clicks open.

Immediately you're back in full panic mode, but when you start to thrash around something beeps and more of that fuzzy heat floods your brain—not enough to knock you out, but enough to make you flop back, dizzy and soft around the edges like you're dissolving in water.

Oh. It's Makara.

He's wearing a really worn out shirt and a pair of ratty pants that you gotta think he kept from his time on the streets, and his hair is unbrushed and in his eyes. He looks like he just woke up too, and he kind of waves at you a little. "Hey," he says, and settles himself down next to the table you're laid on. His eyes are purple, and somehow looking at them makes you feel a little bit better about having him there, so you focus on that deep, blue-tinted purple. He doesn't say anything more—doesn't even watch you for long, just settles down there and pulls out his ratty notebook and starts writing.

"You need somethin', sir?" you mumble eventually, and he glances up.

"Me?"

You nod, weak—he laughs. "Gamzee, motherfucker," he tells you, and flips a page. "I ain't actually anybody important, I just got a few as are special to me, y'dig?"

God, you are not equipped to deal with his way of talking right now. You give it a shot anyway.

"…but y…y'r not a normal purple," you point out foggily. "No drugs now. Not starving. S'all…" you can't think of the words. Tired. "…emperor's matesprit's a pretty…pretty big deal."

He jumps and blinks at you, and oh. Hey. So that's what it looks like when constantly calm Gamzee Makara is nervous.

…you just said that out loud.

You just said the biggest secret you've got _out loud_ to one of the people closest to it and he's staring at you like he's not sure whether to be scared of you or threaten to break your legs if you tell, _fuck._

"…uh," you say stupidly, and he leans closer, a little too close. His eyes are very, very sharp all of a sudden.

"…you haven't told nobody, right?" he says, rushed and quiet. "You can't tell motherfucking_ anybody_. If they think they got proof they'll ask him again and he'll motherfucking _admit _it and he'll tell them all and me, I'm nobody, I can hide in here, but they'd—he—"

He trails off, chewing on his lip, staring at you. You blink at him for a long, long second before you realize he's waiting for an answer and getting jumpier by the second. That's why they're not telling anybody? The emperor would tell them but he…_asked him not to_?

…because he knows it would make trouble. For the emperor. Holy shit.

"No," you get out eventually. "…no, uh…I'm good at keepin' my trap shut, sir—uh. G-gamzee. You gotta be, when you got fins on your face and people got plenty cause to hate you already. I mean. I mouth off at people I shouldn't sometimes, but not stuff I should keep secret, just—"

He holds up a hand.

"Yeah," he says, and he rubs a big, bony hand over his face, relieved. "I got it, bro."

He's seriously going to take your word for it.

He's going to take your _word_ for it?

You do not get this guy at all.

"Well since we're talkin' about my matesprit who ain't the emperor," he says, and stretches, hauling himself up onto this feet again. Shit he's tall. Like, you're plenty tall, but he's gonna be freakishly huge. "…I'm gonna go see what he's up to. See if he's done with his palemate, like maybe he—"

"…if you make a 'pail'-mate joke," you interrupt weakly, "…I'm gonna spontaneously hemorrhage and get purple blood all over everything, I swear to god. Nobody thinks that joke is funny."

He laughs and turns toward the door. "—I'll shut up then! You get your heal on, motherfucker. You got my palemate all riled up on himself worrying."

Oh.

Oh, okay. The presence of a solid reason for him to come down here is comforting, even if it hurts in the little part of you that whispers _because nobody's going to come visit you just to visit you_. Hell, he may not have come to visit for your sake, but the Second Sufferer is worrying about you and that is still bizarre and great and kind of terrifying. You crack a half-grin. "—so that's why you showed up down here. I was wonderin'."

He looks at you…surprised? He looks surprised.

"I'm not here on Karkat's account," he says. "Just here to hang out. For serious."

"I—" Why doesn't the world make sense, what the fuck is your life? "…I…you…what? _Why_?"

"…because I been bandaged up and hurting and waiting for it to get better," he says, and he smiles, all big, crooked fangs and bones. Tired. "…nobody showed for me, way back then. It fucking sucked, bro." He waves a knobbly hand. "Don't suffer in silence."

"I—yeah," you manage weakly, and then he's gone again.

You lie back on the bed and hate yourself and cry a little more for no reason except you want to and it feels right, and at some point you drift off to sleep again.

You don't really have a way of tellin' where you are or how long you've been there, but you think it's the next night by the time people come back in to look at you. They bring Captor and Fef back in with them, and a lot a papers and charts and notes and more things to pump you're your blood that wake you up a little bit from the numb kinda coma that you've been in so much recently. You hadn't realized how far under you were, but sat up with your glasses on and your gills bare to the air and the drugs wearin' off and drainin' the fog outta your head it's like being hatched all over again.

There are questions—quiet, tactful, soft-spoken questions, to Fef, to Captor, not to you. You sit there hatin' everything, and every so often one a them tries to steer it back to you but it doesn't really matter because you're in a stubborn pissy mood now and you don't want to answer questions to them anyway, fuck them. So they go back to askin' questions to Fef and Captor, and you…uh…sulk. Basically. You sulk.

And then the door opens behind you and the little polite-question people look up and scatter like little fish in front of a big shark. A second later, you see why. The doctorturer—fuck, no, doctor, the emperor doesn't like to cultivate the idea his medical staff bein' sadistic murderers—the doctor is a huge oliveblood, looks like she could be a ruffiannihilator at the drop of a hat, big beefy arms the size of your head and horns made for chargin' things. She looks you up and down and you find yourself tryin' to sit up straight automatically.

"So you're Ampora," she says, and advances on the bed. "Alright then—"

The door that just shut behind all the little polite-question trolls opens again, and you are spared for a second as ruffiannihidoctor turns away and frowns at the door instead. Captor leaves his place slouching against the wall and vanishes behind you to go talk to the person in the doorway—you cock your head a little and listen. "…_as soon as I heard,_" someone is saying quietly, "…_away on business—right at the palace's front door—what quadrant…?_"

You are suddenly, blazingly angry. Sick of being talked over, being asked delicate, probing little questions. "Pale!" You snap, and hear the voices in the doorway cut off. You don't turn around. "In case anybody was thinkin' a askin' me instead of goin' over my head like I'm some kinda delicate fuckin' flower!"

The doctorturer—doctor, the _doctor_—is looking over your head and the look on her face would be kinda hilarious if you weren't so angry. "_What_?" You snap at her, and it comes out 'w-what', you're that angry.

Then you turn around, and try to jump up and stand at attention so fast you manage a full second standing up straight before your legs go out from under you.

Captor catches your body in a net of sparks. Fef catches one of your arms.

The Emperor catches the other.

He helps you back up onto the table and then steps back and looks at you, right up close and really—_there_, big brown eyes and fuckin' enormous horns and gold embroidery less than a foot from you, _fuck_. Pity him or not (you choose _not_, holy shit, those are two quadrant-mates you don't want to mess with) he's actually really good-lookin', agh.

"I—wh—you—" You're babblin'. The emperor is smiling, like he's nervous of you—_you_. What the fuck is going on? "Why—?"

"Why are we here?"

You turn around a little and oh look, it's Makara—Gamzee—back again, standing at his palemate's shoulder like a scrawny, wild-haired sentinel. The Second Sufferer is looking at you and it takes you a couple long seconds to realize that he was aimin' that at you. Oh. Yeah, that was what you were gonna ask. Why are you here. Sounds about right. You nod.

"Because there's nobody in this palace we don't bring here on purpose," says Vantas, and the emperor nods. "We value our employees, okay, and we're spending massive amounts of time and money trying to encourage people to be decent to each other and now one of our hardest-working, up and coming officers gets attacked right outside the palace? Fuck, of course we're here."

"Not that I can stay very long," says the emperor sheepishly, like that's a thing he should be sorry about. "I have to go and talk to some people from the border planets in a few minutes, but I wanted to make sure you were alright. You've been, um…you've been very helpful. You really are a credit to the empire."

Oh god, oh god, your eyes are prickling, are you crying you're _crying_, _FUCK. _The emperor makes a sad little noise and kind of holds his hands up, like he's trying to reassure you that he's not gonna hurt you, Gamzee looks worried, Vantas looks tense, Captor is frowning and sparking, and you try to straighten up and stop crying and find that you absolutely fucking _can't_.

"Oh my god," says the Emperor, "Oh no, uh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to…shit, I'm sorry."

"No," you manage, and then your voice cracks and wobbles. "No _I'm _sorry, I'm—I just—disgraceful, I—oh god, I'm sorry—"

Feferi grabs a hold of you and pulls you to her chest, hiding your face in her shoulder. You bury your face in the coolness of her skin and shudder uncontrollably, trying to force yourself back under control—it's not working. Everything is so horrible and so wonderful both at the same time and you're stainin' Fef's expensive new dress but she holds on to you like it doesn't matter.

"_They're just people, Eridan," _she whispers, and rocks you back and forth a little—she sounds like she's about to cry too. "_Just people, good people. Shhh. _Shooosh. You're working yourself up again."

"I think we're upsetting him," says the Emperor's voice, and you want to reassure him you don't mind at all but he doesn't sound upset with you and you don't want to show your face, you're so ugly and gross and your face is all purple from crying. "We should let him rest, I think. If he has anything to say, or to ask…?"

"You'll have to bully him into it," says Vantas firmly. "Being someone's moirail isn't just taking care of the big psychotic breakdown fuckery, it's dealing with them when they're being horrible fucking stubborn little shits." ("Hey," says Makara, but he doesn't sound all that upset.) "If he has questions, _make_ him come and ask us. Okay? We'll leave it in your hands."

"Thank you," says Fef, and she sounds strong. You start to try to sit up—she holds you there and pets your hair and yeah, never mind, you're staying here where it's cool and dark. God, you love her so much… "I'll take care of it."

"We'll get out of your way," says Vantas. "Sollux, I need to talk to you."

A groan. "KK—"

"_Sollux._"

He sounds pissed. Captor doesn't argue again—footsteps, and then quiet.

"…that's never happened before," says the doctor dryly, and you sit up in sudden shock and almost laugh. She cracks half a grin and then goes back to being grim and all business. "You can sit up." It's a statement, not a question. You nod and pull yourself up—the tears have slacked off now that the emperor and his entourage aren't here to extend your humiliation and shame and gratitude. Your face is still leakin' and gross, but you sniff hard and wipe your cheeks off and manage to look her in the eyes. You are rewarded with a firm nod.

"Credit to the empire," Feferi giggles in your ear, and your face goes purple.

"Fef…"

"One of our hardest-working…"

"_Fef_, c'mon…"

"Up and coming—"

You elbow her in the gills—she huffs and giggles, ruffling your hair. The doctor tolerates this for several seconds, and then she claps her hands sharply and says, "…Okay. Time to do my job."

She has you get up—Fef has to help you when it becomes clear that you're not going to be able to stand on your own feet at all. She has you push down on her hands, which you can't, push in all directions against her with your arms and legs, which you can't, and it's mortifyin' and terrible.

You slump on the table afterwards, panting even though you barely did a thing, and she frowns down at her clipboard, checks a few things off, and then looks up at you and says firmly, "…perfectly normal."

You gape at her. She glares back. She's definitely not lyin' to make you feel better. Half of you is panicking, horrified, at the thought they've done some sort of real actual damage to you, that you're _broken_ somehow. The other half is just pathetically glad to hear those words. _Normal._ Whatever this is, it's no mystery, somebody knows what's happened to you.

"I'm going to make a wild leap of logic and guess someone set off your submission reflex," she says, brutally blunt, and it hurts but it's also so good the way she looks right at you and asks questions without dancing around them. Hurts so good. Ahahaha. "Your horns, probably."

"Yes, ma'am," you say, because that's easy to say. Fef looks like she wants to jump in, but you squeeze her hand and she bites her lip and doesn't object.

"You were trying to fight them off at that point?"

"…they were clawin' up my fins, ma'am." The words choke out, but they're almost even. "Woulda been pretty hard not to fight." Her eyes flick from you to the way Fef winces, and she nods slowly.

"At least they only tried a single quadrant," she says, and checks something off on her chart. "No need for a disease screen then."

Oh god. The thought makes you twitch and shudder—the idea that maybe one of them would want to take it red or black while the yellow-blood forced you pale was never one that crossed your mind, and you try to forget it again as quickly as possible. _Fuck_, FUCK.

"They turned on your combat instincts and forced your submission reflex at the same time," the olive-blood informs you, and you snap out of it a little to listen. "Your body isn't made to do that, so it shut down. It's called Diamantic Shock and if you just lie still it should wear off in a matter of weeks."

_Weeks._ You take a few deep breaths. It doesn't help much.

"…any way to cut that down, ma'am?"

"You have a pitchmate?"

Fuck.

"…no."

"You feel like throwing yourself off tall buildings or joining a fight club?"

Ugh, _fuck._

"No."

"Then no." She clips her pen to the board and frowns at you. "…it would speed up recovery if you could get those fight or flight hormones going again. A bit of pain is a good jolt. A kismesis is a better one. If you start hurting yourself I will hunt you down. Are we clear?"

"Crystal clear, ma'am," you say weakly, because really, what else are you going to say?

She nods, turns on her heel, and is gone out the door again in a swirl of ominous white coat.

You sit there in silence with Fef for a little while, and then when you can finally be sure there's nobody at the door and nobody about to come in you slump back on her and sigh, looking around the empty room. It's more of a respite block than a medical block of some kind. There's a standing clothes chamber in the corner. A desk in the other with a husktop sitting open on it—holy shit are you supposed to _use_ that thing? It's probably worth more than your apartment. Another door that looks like it leads to an ablution chamber and a load gaper—oh and there's a fridge! Thermal hull. There's a thermal hull. You may or may not start to drool at the first thought of getting something edible in your mouth, and to keep yourself from hauling yourself up to stagger over and stuff your face like an imbecile you look over at Fef instead. She's watchin' you with that horribly amazing tenderness in her eyes and you have to swallow hard to form words.

"…so what's the news?" you ask, and she makes a surprised little noise and sits up suddenly straight.

"—that's right, I forgot to tell you!" She exclaims, and giggles. "—Eridan you won't believe this, but—the emperor says, since you have to cross such a dangerous part of town to get back to our apartment and you're valuable to the empire and everyfin…" She clears her throat and then finishes, almost calm but shakin' with glee. "…he's set us up a place _here_! We're going to live in the _palace!_"

Oh.

_Oh._

Oh god.

"Holy shit," you say, and imagine Fef not bein' left in an empty apartment with nobody to watch her back if she has to fight someone off. Imagine you bein' able to work a little longer and then just walk through the palace to one of the huge, empty rooms and an actual soft couch and actual sopor patches that work and aren't half-rotted. You can be happy. _She can be happy_. "Holy _shit._"

"I _know!_"

"Oh my god!"

"I know!"

You're laughing, breathless—she holds on to you and both of you are sort of laughing and crying and horrible but god, even if this is too good to be true until it falls through you are taking it one amazing second at a time and then you're…crying again, because you remember what you did to have this, you remember what was done and you don't want to bring Fef down when she's so happy but you're retching again and then laughing and then crying and she has to hold you and shoosh you all over again, god, how many times are you going to end up shaking and sick before you're _normal_ again?

She drugs you up again and kisses your forehead as you fall back into the bed. She even takes your glasses off for you, guides your hand to where they are on the side table so you'll know and then wraps you up in blankets and leaves you to sink back down and sleep like the dead.

(You blink awake in the middle of the day shaking and sweating and there's a hot hand on your clammy forehead, pressing your hands firmly back down as you try to claw at yourself and _get them off get the hands off_—_shut up you idiot_, says a voice that might almost be just in your head. _Shut up and lie back down. I'm not letting anybody hurt you again. Okay? You're gonna be fine._)

(click)

You drift in and out of a sort of healing coma after that, until finally one day the people in white coats come back and unhook some of the pipes and wires that have been on you. They cut your bandages, and the air on your fins stings for a second before it settles back down and oh god, they can move and flick and twitch and you fan and fold them once or twice even though it aches, just to feel them work. Fuck, that's amazing.

They all back out after that, takin' their equipment and their smell like chemicals with 'em, and you are left sitting in this respite block that is twice as big and maybe ten times more expensively furnished than your entire floor of the apartment hivestem you were livin' in.

The very first thing you do is stagger into the ablution block and stare at yourself in the mirror.

Your fins are so much better than you were expectin'. The tines are delicate, but they heal fast; they're only slightly crooked in one or two places, hardly a sign they were crumpled up and snapped. The membranes are seamed with miniscule stitches, barely swollen anymore—in one or two places there are rips big enough they couldn't sew them shut without crinklin' and warpin' your fins, and those places are left neat little holes. Fef's right, you can put hoops through those. Heh. The missing teeth are coming back in, the big bruise that was all over your left eye is almost gone…

You look in the mirror and see an almost decent troll.

After that, there's clothes. Your clothes are nowhere to be found, but there's a closet of stuff in the corner that's perfectly your size and you pull out an absolutely fuckin' gorgeous sweater with your sign worked into the front, _made for you_, holy shit, and oh god, they must have talked to Fef because there's a whole set of silky scarves in purple, in blue, in black and white.

You sit there and cry in front of the closet for a while, and it's _stupid_, frivolous, it's fuckin' _fashion_ and who ever heard of a seatrolll with the time to bother or the energy to care about fashion but you just touch the soft fabric and run it through your fingers and kind of sob, really careful not to get stains on the scarf that's clutched in your hands.

When you're finally done you go hunting through the clothes and very carefully pick one a those amazing beautiful black sweaters and a blue striped scarf and pants that actually fit. And then, feeling a lot more like an actual troll again, you haul yourself over to the desk in the other corner to boot up the husktop.

When you finally sign back on to a computer hub, your mood drops like a stone. Your story is still on front pages. The story is vague, the pictures are blurry.

The comments are sharp as knives.

Didn't fuck him doesn't count, pale rape isn't even a thing, what the fuck, who cares, stop wasting feed on cold-bloods, first the purple whore and now this, like anybody else would pap that, he was out at night with his fins out, if he didn't want them touched he should've covered them, he was asking for it…

You stare at the screen, numb and distant. It doesn't even hurt. You just…can't believe what you're reading. People who think you did It for attention, who think it didn't happen at all, who wish they'd been there…

The comment on the top flickers, and changes. The anonymous icon reloads as a blurry mugshot: at the bottom of the comment, a neat little caption appears; _Trevyk Hartel, Teal, six sweeps._ First that comment, then all of them, name, blood color, age, address and chat handle.

A new comment appears at the top of the list, and sticks there. _Attention, 2cum of the iimperiial network! Congratulatiion2, you ju2t earned your2elve2 exclu2iive 2pot2 on the iimperiial watch lii2t for blood-related hate criime2 and are under 2u2pii2ciion of viiolatiing the Treatii2e of Hii2toriical Autodiidactiion. _

_That'2 what you get for thiinkiing you can be douchebag2 ju2t becau2e you're anon._

_Watch your a22e22._

You are horribly, shamefully grateful.

You are horribly, furiously ashamed. You could have _dealt_ with it, you didn't need him to _protect_ you like that, ward them off for you, shame them when it was you they were goin' after. If you were pitch, maybe that would be even a little okay, maybe even kind of romantic in a _you can't fight him he's mine to fight_ kinda way, but you ain't and you aren't gonna be ever because for god's sake your blood colors are practically complementary.

It hurts.

You shut off your computer and stumble back to the couch, plaster two sopor patches onto your arm under your sweater and bury your face in your pillow, hoping to whatever has ever sent you a stroke of good luck that you're not going to dream.

(_you dream you're a prince and there's a queen by your side and you wear your fins like a crown instead of a curse and there's gold on your fingers and) _you wake up crying in the middle of the day for some reason you can't remember, turn over, and go back to sleep.

* * *

Three weeks later you are about as a third as strong as you ever were, you're doin' your patrols on power a pure stubbornness with a stubbly new streak of purple in your shaved hair, Captor is alternately breathin' over your shoulder and makin' big shiny sparky baby-barkbeast eyes at your moirail, and you are fuckin' sick of everything.

Today the entertainment of the hour was someone showin' up and tryin' to splatter Gam's head across the room and you didn't even manage to bring him down until the backup showed. Fuckin' embarrassin', it's like bein' made of wet tissues. So you're haulin' your ass back across the palace to your moirail's lovin' paps, sore and really fuckin' tired and with a headache the size of Alternia, and the last thing you need is for a tall, thin figure to swing out of a doorway as you pass and fall into step behind you.

"Heard you need a kismesis,"lisps Captor.

Oh, that's rich, him raggin' on you about unfilled quadrants. At least you've _got_ one.

"I'm not discussin' this with you," you snap back, and then add, bitter and not at all professional on the end, "…_sir._"

You start walkin' again, and you don't hear his footsteps comin' after you so _maybe—_

You come to a scrambling, undignified halt, yelping in alarm, as he drops smoothly down in front of you, upside-down, hanging in a cocoon of red and blue sparks.

"Heard you need a kismesis," he repeats, and flips down onto his feet again as you start to shove past him. "—no you don't, get back here."

"I'm tryin' to do my job," you say pointedly, and straighten your jacket a little—your badge gleams. "I'm still on duty."

"You're always 'doin' your job'," he says, and he imitates your voice insultingly well, even the trace of your accent. You bristle. "Technically I'm your boss, so talking to me _is_ doing your job. So, do your job why don't you, ED?"

Oh god you loathe him. _Platonically_. Of course platonically, anything else would be stupid.

"_Yes sir_," you grit out, and stand at attention because hell if he's makin' this your job, _you're_ making this your job.

He looks surprised. "_That's _what gets you?" He looks incredulous, _yeah, you've never had to dig food scraps out of trash before, have you? Never been turned down for no reason or replaced by some warmer-blooded asswipe who can't find his nook with both hands?_

"This job is _kind of_ important to me," you snap, and it comes out dripping vitriol and spite and you don't really give a fuck. "I'm takin' care of me _and_ my moirail, I ain't had a job this solid in sweeps and when I get kicked out every single hundredth-caegar I've earned is gonna keep us in warm clothes for the 12th perigee and keep food on the table, okay?!" _(Fef had curled up when it got cold and gone still, heart pumping so slowly, barely breathing and you'd gone to work and brought back the best food you could get, woke her up a little every night to trickle water into her, you'd almost starved but you're one of a thousand and she's one in a billion.)_

"…who says you're getting kicked out?"

You jump a little and he's looking at you, like he's trying to sort you out, figure out what you are.

"We're not going to kick you out," he says, and for some reason the intense way he's lookin' at you makes your breath come fast and shallow. You gotta get out of here. You need your moirail, you need to be alone—you feel like you're coming up on something, like you're going to explode and you have no idea whether you're going to go for his throat or…

…you don't know what the alternative is. But you can feel it loomin' and it's making your heart pound in your throat.

"That's nice," you say, rougher than you mean to, and turn your face away so you don't have to look at him lookin' at you. "…we done here, Captor—_sir_?"

He groans. "_Sollux_," he tells you, and it's an order. "…only _douchebags_ like being called by their last names, _Ampora._"

Oh, _fuck_ him. "_Eridan_," you snap back, "—only douchebags assume shit about people 'cause of what they like to be called and then call them that anyway."

He sniggers at that, this sharp little horrible sound, and your fins burn and flick. Still stinging. You need pills. You need to not deal with Captor—Sollux, ugh—right now. God.

"You got it, ED," he says, and he steps up a little. Your fully healthy and recently increased personal space pings at you, but stepping back would be like losing a little battle and you stand your ground.

He seems to notice how twitchy it's making you, having him closer. His obnoxious smile falls a little. He steps back.

"…was there a point to this _lovely_ encounter, Sol?" You inquire acidly, and celebrate a little inside over the look on his face.

"_Sollux,_" he corrects you.

"Then stop callin' me ED."

"_Hell _no."

"Then basically fuck you."

He smirks again, and oh he's going to do the thing, isn't that cute. You could almost mouth along when he lisps, "—we haven't even had a date yet, bit forward, don't you—?"

Oh god, he thinks he's such a hotshot and he has no fuckin' clue what he's doin'. (Not that you've got a ton of experience, you're too proud still to go home with anyone who hits on you just 'cause they want to take a set of fins and gills for a run, but still.) You've got the upper hand, and it feels basically illegally good to be in a position of power for once.

"You wanna stop before you embarrass yourself even more," you cut him off. "—that's the stalest line anybody's ever used on anybody in the history a awkward black passes."

His expression doesn't show any change, but his cheeks go kind of ashy yellow. Score.

"Oh, _I'm_ the one who's flirting black—"

"Makin' a mockery of it anyway, like we'd ever end up pitch with you _standin' over me_ all the time, showin' off!"

He sputters. "What the fuck, what are you talking about?! I'm trying to keep you from _killing _yourself here—"

"—rubbin' it in my face you're a million times _smarter_ than me, _richer_—"

"—pretend you've got this under control when you're just tearing yourself down by being a _moron—_"

"—_important_ than me and I'm so fucking _sick_ of you always—"

"—always _pushing_, ED—"

"Stop callin' me that!"

"Why should I? We should be getting more familiar with each other!" He smirks at you, showing all his horrible teeth. "…we're at quadrant corners now. You should congratulate your moirail, by the way! _ED_."

You knew it was comin', knew they'd been dancing around flushed for ages and ages, but it still stings and the stupid nickname grates on your raw nerves and you're stepping up before you have time to think about it, tossing your horns and baring your teeth, fins all snapping out to full spread, and he _mirrors_, he steps up and twists his head and for a second you think you're actually going to lock horns. His sparks flare out like your fins did, this glittering halo that glints off his eyes and his fangs and _whoa._

_Whoa_, this is looking way too much like an honest-to-god threat display, back up.

You do. You back up—someone's got to be the bigger troll and quit playing pitch cluckbeast like six-sweep-old brats, and it might as well be you. You break eye contact, flatten your fins and pull back your horns.

"…You mind not flirtin' _quite_ so much," you say, and it comes out a little more sincere than you intended it to, "…I'm on duty."

Sol reaches out and snags the badge off your chest, pitches it over his shoulder and _looms_ at you.

"…_now you're _off-_duty,_" he says, really close, _really_ quiet, and you paid _three weeks' fuckin' pay for that badge, that insufferable _prick!

You do the only obvious thing, and punch him in the mouth.

With your mouth.

And kind of maybe your tongue.

He makes a lot of confused noises and flails at you for a second before he seems to get what's going on—nerd. You bite him for that, and _that_ seems to get him back in the swing of things. His sparks sting on your cheeks and he uses his height to his advantage and kisses you back like it's a competition.

Well you have no idea how to win, but you're sure as hell not going to _lose_.

"You neurotic little _shit_," you hiss at him when he pulls away, and fuck, you hate that extra few inches he has on you. (Suddenly all the times you've thought that over the past sweep and a half make so much more sense, so much sense—_I hate, I hate, I hate_—you've been telling yourself how much you hated him ever since you started to work with him and it's like only just now are things sliding into place. "What the fuck is wrong with your tongue?!"

He sticks it out and wiggles it at you; it's got a split down the middle like a slither-beast and he's wiggling the tips at you separately good god that's _bizarre_. And you thought you were the strange one, with your fins and gills and the purple streak in your hair.

…you don't have to cross town anymore. You should grow your hair back out, now that you don't have to pay to dye it.

You're so suddenly enamored of that thought you forget to be mad for a second, and it only occurs to you when he starts laughin' at you that he probably thinks the gleeful look on your face is pertainin' to kissin' someone with a freaky split tongue. Just to disabuse him of that notion, you kick him hard in the shin.

The way he doubles over and swears is really the best thing you have ever felt in your life. You're going to have to do that more often.

"Freak," you inform the top of his head as he groans—ha, standard issue steel-toed boots. You hope you didn't break his leg, that would kind of suck as far as black making out goes. Damaging your partner in the long term is a thing some trolls go in for, but if you damage someone and then hate them for bein' weak enough to damage that's the start of a slippery slide into some real nasty shit…

You are abruptly distracted from the thought by him body-checking you into the wall and getting a scrawny arm against your throat, tilting your face up towards him so he can kiss you again. His ridiculous fangs keep getting in the way—it's sloppy and nasty and toothy and _awesome_—until a second later when he grabs you by the upper arms and _oh fuck him_ he _lifts you off the ground_ to kiss you, holding you up with his psionics with your feet dangling off the ground. You yelp and cling at him entirely on instinct and get one of those _haha I win_ sniggers in your ear.

And then his mouth touches your fin and you flinch right out of his arms and punch him in the face.

He staggers back. You drop hard onto your feet and hit the wall with a jolt that shakes the breath out of you.

For a second, neither of you moves. Both of you are just slumped, breathing hard. Your whole body is still tinglin' with hormones and endorphins and shit, but now it's only about 10% of that throbbing, pitch-black need and about 90% shaky, panicky terror. You knocked his glasses off; from this distance you can see the difference of light and dark in his eyes. The light points flick up to you, back down. He can't look at you.

That's okay, because you're havin' considerable trouble lookin' at him either.

"…Sorry," he says, and that should sound condescending when you were just tryin' to drag the hatefulness outta him through his mouth, but there's this tone to his voice, this sort of grim respect. It feels like losin' a sparrin' match and getting' a hand up. It feels…okay. "I forgot."

He rubs a hand over his face and then looks up at you and grimaces. "…yeah, uh…"

Oh fuck he's going to take it back he's going to leave, _fuck_.

"…don't let it happen again," you tell him, with all the authority you can muster, and his stupid multi-colored eyes go wide and spark for a second with surprise before you wave him off with a regal hand and he bristles. "And work on your kissin' too, shit's disgraceffff_FFUCK—!_"

He just smacked you in the gills and almost kneed you in the crotch. You punch him in his stupid scrawny stomach.

Yeah, you figure, and grab his hair to kiss him again like your heart's not beatin' in your throat. Yeah.

You could get used to this.

Your name is Sollux Captor and oh my god, _busy_ right now, fuck off! Go be some other stupid asshole!

Your name is Gamzee Makara and you can't do this shit right now, you're jamming. Come back later.

Your name is Karkat Vantas and YOU HEARD HIM WHO ELSE WOULD HE BE JAMMING WITH WHY WOULD YOU EVEN TRY TO oh—oh, that feels nice…

Your name is Tavros Nitram and you are asleep at your desk on top of a pile of papers. You are dreaming, as you often do, about flying. You are so tired and pitiable, we will choose not to disturb you. Sleep well, your Humility.

Your name is Eridan Ampora and right now you're winning and you're happy and that's all there is to say.


End file.
